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In The Second Spring, the widely published author Joseph Bottum pens what may be the most original cultural undertaking in decades – an attempt to heal the damaged poetry of our time with an infusion of music, and an effort to strengthen the weak music of our age with an injection of poetry. Ten years ago, in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly, Bottum published an essay called “The Soundtracking of America,” a much-attacked account of the misuse of music in contemporary culture. Now, with The Second Spring, he comes at the problem from the other side, as a lyricist rather than a critic. Selecting twenty-four haunting melodies, from a 13th-century Galician-Portuguese cantiga to a modern country/western tune, Bottum composes new verses that both stand alone as poems and reach deep into the roots of the musical genres in which they stand. Hymns, lullabies, folk tunes, pop songs, dirges, shape-note spirituals, broadsides, and Renaissance Italian dances – The Second Spring explores all these without sarcasm or mockery, allowing each genre to express itself within its natural form. The Second Spring contains the lyrics, melodies, and new piano arrangements (with guitar chords) for twenty-four songs: new words to old music. With an introduction and, as an appendix, the text of “The Soundtracking of America,” this book is a vital and significant event in the nation’s artistic culture.

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The novel has lost its purpose, Joseph Bottum argues in this fascinating new look at the history of fiction. We have not transcended our need for what novels provide, but we have grown to distrust the culture that allowed novels to flourish. “For almost three hundred years,” Bottum writes, “the novel was a major art form, perhaps the major art form, of the modern world—the device by which, more than any other, we tried to explain ourselves to ourselves.” But now we no longer “read novels the way we used to.”In a historical tour de force—the kind of sweeping analysis almost lost to contemporary literary criticism—Bottum traces the emergence of the novel from the modern religious crisis of the individual soul and the atomized self. In chapters on such figures as Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Mann, he examines the enormous ambitions once possessed by novels and finds in these older works a rebuke of our current failure of nerve.“We walk with our heads down,” Bottum writes. “Without a sense of the old goals and reasons––a sense of the good achieved, understood as progress––all that remains are the crimes the culture committed in the past to get where it is now. uncompensated by achievement, unexplained by purpose, these unameliorated sins must now seem overwhelming: the very definition of a failed culture.” In readings of everything from genre fiction to children’s books, Bottum finds a lack of faith in the ability of art to respond to the deep problems of existence. “the decline of the novel’s prestige reflects and confirms a genuine cultural crisis,” he writes.Linking the novel to its religious origins, Bottum describes the urgent search for meaning in the new conditions of the modern age: “If the natural world is imagined by modernity as empty of purpose, then the hunt for nature’s importance is supernatural, by definition.” the novel became a fundamental device by which culture pursued the supernatural—facilitated by modernity’s confidence in science and cultural progress. Losing that confidence, Bottum says, we lost the purpose of the art: “the novel didn’t fail us. We failed the novel.”Told in fast-paced, wide-ranging prose, Bottum’s The Decline of the Novel is a succinct critique of classical and contemporary fiction, providing guidelines for navigating the vast genre. this book is a must-read for those who hunger for grand accounts of literature, students of literary form, critics of contemporary art, and general readers who wish to learn, finally, what we all used to know: the deep moral purpose of reading novels.

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The poetry of Spending the Winter is musical and structured, whimsical and piercing, begging to be read aloud when one is not laughing or arrested by an image that hooks the heart. “Poems so severely beautiful that they become unforgettable after one reading,” writes one poet. “A throwback to a time when lovers of poetry…looked for poetry of depth, wit, and craft from the likes of Auden and Larkin,” adds another. With sections of comedy that show his wit, translations that echo his vast reading, and formalist poetry that reveal his craft, Bottum aims, in the way few poets these days do, at memorable lines and heart-stopping images as he seeks the deep stuff of human experience: God and birth and death—the beautiful and terrifying finitude of life. “We do with words what little words can do,” he writes. But in Spending the Winter, Joseph Bottum shows that words can do far more than a little. “Poems so severely beautiful that they become unforgettable after one reading. . . . If you’re a reader who loves poetry whatever mood it’s in, just open Spending the Winter anywhere to find poems that hurt, enlighten, and delight.” —Rhina P. Espaillat, author of Rehearsing Absence and winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize “Joseph Bottum is a brilliant formalist, and to read him is to enter the world of the tried-and-true classics, all achieved with an amazingly contemporary ring. His Spending the Winter is a delight. Here is a poetry of elegy, humor, wit, political savvy, and vast learning.” —Paul Mariani, author The Great Wheel and winner of the John Ciardi Award “Joseph Bottum’s Spending the Winter is a throwback to a time when lovers of poetry outside the literary establishment looked for poetry of depth, wit, and craft from the likes of Auden and Larkin. This is poetry from another age—an age when we expected intellectual, religious, and literary significance from our verse.” —A.M. Juster, author of Wonder and Wrath and winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize “Spending the Winter is a word-lover’s dream: Joseph Bottum’s poems pierce, probe, dazzle, and delight. They will open the eyes of your soul.” —Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well “When reading Spending the Winter, I recalled C.S. Lewis’s description of joy as a wanting for something that is beyond this world. There’s a sense in these poems that things around us are fleeting, yet for that reason, the poems ask us to pay all the more attention.” —Jessica Hooten Wilson, author of Giving the Devil his Due

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Inspire children to be thankful for all of God’s blessings with this joyful celebration of the simple pleasures all around us. Perfect for sharing at bedtime or story time, The World Is Awake gives children (and their parents) a sense of awe and wonder at the world around them. From blooming flowers in the backyard to the roaring animals at the zoo to the breeze in the evening trees … the world is awake! Linsey Davis, New York Times bestselling author Emmy Award-winning?ABC News anchor invites us to celebrate the everyday miracles that surround us in this inspiring and diverse picture book. The World Is Awake: features playful and heartwarming read aloud rhymes includes whimsical, joy-filled illustrations from bestselling artist Lucy Fleming is a great bedtime or story time read for ages 0-4, preschool, kindergarten and early elementary age kids celebrates diversity and inspires gratitude for God’s blessings makes a wonderful gift for birthdays, Easter, and other gift-giving holidays Celebrate your everyday blessings through The World Is Awake. Share the joy of God’s blessing with even the littlest readers in the board book adaptation – The World is Awake for Little Ones. Look for additional inspirational children’s picture books and audio products from award-winning author Linsey Davis: Smallest Spot of a Dot How High is Heaven Stay This Way Forever One Big Heart The Linsey Davis Children’s Audio Collection

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Inspire children to be thankful for all of God’s blessings with this joyful celebration of the simple pleasures all around us. Perfect for sharing at bedtime or story time, The World Is Awake gives children (and their parents) a sense of awe and wonder at the world around them.Linsey Davis, New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning ABC News anchor, invites us to celebrate the everyday miracles that surround us in this inspiring and diverse picture book. From blooming flowers in the backyard to the roaring animals at the zoo to the breeze in the evening trees … the world is awake!Now also available as a board book, The World Is Awake: features playful and heartwarming read-aloud rhymes from Emmy Award-winning ABC News anchor Linsey Davis includes whimsical, joy-filled illustrations from bestselling artist Lucy Fleming is a great board book for ages 0-4, preschool, kindergarten and early elementary age kids celebrates diversity and inspires gratitude for God’s blessings makes a wonderful gift for birthdays, Easter, and other gift-giving holidays Celebrate your everyday blessings through The World Is Awake.Look for additional inspirational children’s picture books and audio products from award-winning author Linsey Davis: Smallest Spot of a Dot How High is Heaven Stay This Way Forever One Big Heart The Linsey Davis Children’s Audio Collection

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