Prayers in Hell

King Midas – the legend says – transformed everything he touched into gold. Theodor Damian transforms everything he touches into poetry.

Sequences from street life, landscapes, people’s gestures, usually looked upon as banalities, disclose, under his eye, their beauty. Other contemporary authors make poetry out of poetry. Theodor Damian makes poetry out of daily reality.

The blase man of the twenty first century has a lot to learn from this book. Reading it one can rediscover the joy of life. It is a resurrection exercise.

Alex Stefanescu

This is an exceptional book, a synthesis of the poet’s lyric and philosophical vision on how the impossible looses its limits when it is immersed in prayer. In Damian’s poetry the “I” of the lyrical and the “I” of metaphysical reflection complement each other in total harmony and become definitory for the poet’s work when they meet in the profound dimensions of Christian spirituality.

Prayers in Hell represents an editorial event of utmost importance in the landscape so arid and so repetitive of our contemporary poetry.

M. N. Rusu

About the author:

Theodor Damian is a theologian, writer and editor, born in Romania. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at the Metropolitan College of New York. He has previously published poetry, theology and literary criticism and is editor of a quarterly review of Romanian spirituality and culture and of a theological review.