The Book of Uncommon Prayer - Hardcover

Lyrical new prayers for the monastic hours of the day – a combination of love poetry, spiritual lyric illuminating the richness of heartfelt supplication.

In the great literary tradition of poets such as Rainer Maria Rilke, W.H. Auden, and Thomas Merton, critically acclaimed author Katherine Mosby offers an eloquent collection of verse modeled on the medieval Book of Hours, a cycle of prayers designed for private meditation.

Arranged to parallel the eight 'hours' of the liturgical day – matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, and compline – Mosby's poetry fuses joy, fear, love, anger, and desire in a rich celebration of the heart's search for meaning in everyday life. Liberating prayer from the constraints of traditional contexts and using poetry to 'invest the prosaic with the profound,' her work illuminates the longing for transcendence at the core of the spiritual path. 'The Book of Uncommon Prayer' invites both the literary reader and the seeker of a more spiritual life to begin a personal quest for grace.

Rising literary star Katherine Mosby offers an exquisite book of hours that is at once love poetry and spiritual lyric. 'The Book of Uncommon Prayer' is a contemporary poet's passionate reimagining of what prayer can be.

Praise for Katherine Mosby's 'Private Altars':

"Katherine Mosby audaciously bucks fashionable themes, and the result is a stunning lyrical work of fiction."
TIME

"Mosby...writes with fluid grace."
PEOPLE

"It is a book that no one who loves language should let slip by."
BOSTON GLOBE

"Whether providing social commentary or lyrical description, Mosby is committed, above all, to the sentence...(A) poetic style and an absorbing narrative...(A) tremendously ambitious undertaking...drawing strength from close observation."
THE NEW YORKER

"Katherine Mosby's extraordinary voice combines the ear of the Roman poets with the psychological insights of a Henry James, but the result of the blend is all her own."
MADISON SMARTT BELL

"This is a stained-glass window of a book...Mosby's language shines brightly."
HOUSTON CHRONICLE