S P I R I T B O O K W O R D - an inquiry into literature and spirituality
J.S. Porter
Born in Belfast and educated in Canada, J.S. Porter is a passionate and omnivorous reader. An accomplished poet, critic and teacher, his poems, articles, reviews and essays have appeared in Grail, The Antigonish Review, Quarry, Brick, The Hamilton Spectator, The Ottawa Citizen, The National Post, The
Globe and Mail and the Literary Review of Canada. He currently teaches literature at Mohawk College in Hamilton. This is his official website.
Personal Responses
from an e-mail by Ellen S. Jaffe, July 26, 2011, regarding the cover image
I’ve now looked closely at the cover, and also looked at the correspondence about this image. I like this cover — the clear, bright pastoral image of the field and the man in a business suit, reading, his face hidden by the book. The image itself is arresting —a bit like a Magritte painting — and asks the viewer to enter this curious world; we (I ) are drawn in, not put off. And it also says something about the “Jewish writer” — choosing books, reading and writing, even when in the midst of nature. Good colours, too.
from an e-mail by Helen McLean to Maureen Whyte, the publisher of Seraphim, Sept. 15, 2011
I wanted to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed Lightness and Soul. It’s a beautiful book. A word or a phrase would catch my brain or heart or some such important organ and I would have to read it again two or three times and stop to meditate about it.
from an e-mail by Eric Mader, Sept. 17, 2011
It was a great pleasure reading you on Cohen, Bloom and Weil. These are writers I know quite well; and here I have a brother in spirit, a reader that notices and values many of the same elements, bringing them out in such engaging jargon-free prose. There is much of Hemingway in your style.
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