A Little Book of Hours

Taking its starting point from John Donne’s prose—“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”—John Deane takes a period of time and trawls through it for meaning and purpose. Beginning with a simple island, each subsequent piece features great figures, such as King David, and examines the futility of war and the place of poetry in fighting for a more just society. The collection’s centerpiece, “A Little Book of Hours,” journeys through Europe in search of spiritual truth. This collection is a meditation on how the Christian myth is seen to penetrate all of humanity and nature.