A Sacrifice of Praise

Last night I taught my freshman writing class how to write about poetry.  The conversation was very brief, as it needed to be, so I wanted to get a wide variety of poetry for the class to read aloud and think about…and then write an in class essay on!

As I was preparing the packet of poetry for this class, I decided to look over James Trott’s anthology A Sacrifice of Praise: An Anthology of Christian Poetry from Cædmon to the Twentieth Century.  I was surprised to find a treasure trove of the regular members of the English poetic canon—Cædmon, Herbert, Donne, Milton, Rossetti, Hopkins, Eliot—mixed in with many of the great hymn writers of the Protestant tradition and some unknown Christian poets of the past three centuries.

This book is not a general anthology. It is an all encompassing academic tome: it weighed on me as I carried it through New York City and comes in at 804 pages.  It’s not for the light of heart, but it’s ideal for the student or teacher.  The next time I am teaching a survey class on poetry this is one anthology that I will go combing through, and if I ever teach a survey class strickly on poetry at a Christian college this will probably be one of the textbooks I would assign.

A Sacrifice of Praise
James Trott
Cumberland House Publishing
$26.95 (Amazon)