You Are the Future is the recipient of a Silver Medal by the Nautilus Book Awards.
To order this book from goodreads.com, click here,
or from amazon.com, click here.
For a short video introduction to this book, click here.
"I love beginnings, despite the fear and uncertainty they bring. When I have won for myself a joy or reward, or when I wish that something had not happened, when I want to deny an experience the right to remain in my past--in such moments, I begin. And what do I do? I simply begin. I've already begun a thousand lives like this. I feel as though a whole generation must come to fulfill all these lives so that they won't remain unfinished."
Rainer Maria Rilke, cited in "To Be a Beginner"
from You Are the Future: Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke
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*** ART AND POETRY IN DIALOGUE: "THE FOUR SEASONS OF LIFE": A retreat on the Isle of Iona (Scotland), Oct. 27 - Nov. 1 (at the St. Columba Hotel). This retreat, co-led with Dr. Deborah Lewer (University of Glasgow), explores the earth’s seasons—with their energies and patterns—as metaphors that reflect deep experiences of life, love and death. What we learn from this rhythm often startles us with unexpected insights into our own lives and the lives of others. Sessions examine a range of provocative contemporary poems (Burrows) and vivid works of art (Lewer) from many eras, probing their gestures, surprises and silences. SPACE IS LIMITED. For more information and to register, click here.
*** THE JULIAN CIRCLE CONTINUES...on an Advent afternoon: Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, 4 - 5:30 pm EDT
Join us for an afternoon gathering to explore the visionary writings of Julian of Norwich. Our invitation is to explore the experience of “beholding love,” which is the heart of Julian’s faith. She knew this as the very “ground” of a life lived in love. It is also a theme central to Advent, a season that is not about remembering what once happened nor a time of waiting for something to happen. No, Advent is about what is happening, now—in love. For Julian invites us to “cleave” to the depth of the Love that encloses us. It is an attuning of ourselves to Mary who “enclosed” Love in her womb in order to bear it into the world. Join us for an Advent experience to practice this “beholding,” to encourage this “cleaving,” and to dare this “birthing.” For this lifts us beyond what Julian saw as the “ignorance of love” that too often weighs us down. And it is this that reminds us, in her words, that “God’s goodness is all the whole and in it nothing can fail.” For more information, and to register, click here.
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* TO LISTEN TO THE RECENT "READING RILKE TODAY" CONVERSATION, TOGETHER WITH PADRAIG O TUAMA AND KRISTA TIPPETT, click here.
TO LISTEN TO MY RECENT CONVERSATION about my new books, The Wandering Radiance: Selected Poems of Hilde Domin and Meister Eckhart's Book of Darkness and Light, WITH LISA DELAY ("SPARK MY MUSE" PODCAST), click here.
* * TO LISTEN TO THE RECENT "POETS CORNER" CONVERSATION (April 2, 2023) ON The Wandering Radiance, with Marion Tauschwitz, Christopher Nelson, and Hilary Davies, click here.
*** TO LISTEN TO THE RECENT PODCAST ("OUT OF THE FOG" WITH KAREN HAGER) FEATURING JON SWEENEY AND ME ON OUR NEW ECKHART BOOK, click here.
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Recently distinguished as one of the "Best Spiritual Books of 2024" by Spirituality and Practice, and listed as a Finalist in Poetry by the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
J. B. Leishman, who published the first translation of this collection in 1936, wrote that "I feel, in reading [these sonnets], that we have come round the spiral to another 'dawn of consciousness,' where language is in the making, and where myth and symbol must often supply the place of not yet thinkable thoughts. No other writer is so full of the future; no other gives us such thrilling intimations of that inheritance on whose threshold we are standing, and which our civilization may be about to enter, if it does not perish through its own destructive forces."
To order from goodreads.com, click here, or from amazon.com, click here.
To hear Mark's interview on the impossible, joyful journey of translating Rilke the "Emerging Form" podcast, with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Christie Asch, click here.
To preorder this forthcoming book, click here.
NOW AVAILABLE:
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Received a "Gold Medal" by the Nautilus Book Awards in 2024.
Published on March 1, 2023: the third of our Eckhart books, re-voicing the startling wisdom of Meister Eckhart in short, meditative poems. To preorder, click here.
What readers are saying about it:
"Sweeney and Burrows, in poems that are as elegant as they are scholarly, revoice Meister Eckhart’s grounding and expansive instructions to 'seek the light that shines / out of the darkness.'" —Pádraig Ó Tuama, poet and host of Poetry Unbound, from On Being Studios
"Meister Eckhart is one of the greatest of Christian mystics, but because of his depth he can be challenging to read. Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows unlock the poetry in his words to allow his light to shine. What Coleman Barks has done for Rumi, they have done for Eckhart—making his insight accessible and his wisdom sing.” —Carl McColman, author of The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism and Eternal Heart
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Published in 2023:
"Burrows has succeeded in carrying the radiant power of Domin's poems over to the shoreline of his native tongue. This is an enrichment for all who long to be stirred by the courage and resilience she embodied as a Jewish writer who said of herself, upon returning to Germany following decades in exile: 'I stepped out into the air, and it carried me.'" --Vera-Sabine Winkler, author of Leise Bekenntnisse. Die Bedeutung der Poesie für die Sprache der Liturgie am Beispiel von Hilde Domin
"These shimmering poems by Hilde Domin lodge in the heart and blaze in the mind as they trace the journey of a deep soul through exile and self-realization. I would recommend these vivid poems to anyone who ares about the transformative power of great poetry." --Jay Parini, poet, biographer, screen-writer, and author of Why Poetry Matters
This new translation marks the first full collection of Hilde Domin's poems in English; to order this volume directly from Green Linden Press, click here. For a short endorsement by CAConrad, click here.
A SAMPLE OF RECENT BOOKS
Mark S. Burrows, The Chance of Home. Poems (2018); to order, click here (Paraclete) or here (amazon.com).
Meister Eckhart's Book of Secrets, with Jon M. Sweeney (2019); to order, click here.
Meister Eckhart's Book of the Heart, with Jon M. Sweeney; poems revoicing the wisdom of Meister Eckhart; to order, click here.
Also available: revised paperback edition of Rainer Maria Rilke, Prayers of a Young Poet (Paraclete Press, 2016). Heralded by Bill Moyers as "a powerful alchemy of the heart." To order, click here.
SAID, 99 Psalms, translated by Mark S. Burrows (Paraclete Press, 2013); to order, click here.
The Paraclete Poetry Anthology. Selected and New Poems, 2015 - 2016, edited by Mark S. Burrows (2016). To oder, click here.