Houston, Texas – November 11, 2022 – Press Release: Saint Julian Press is proud to announce the one year anniversary for a new book of poetry. A PILGRIMAGE OF CHURCHES, by author and poet Ron Starbuck, published on October 15, 2021.
St. John Lutheran Church, Easton Township, Kansas
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A PILGRIMAGE OF CHURCHES is one person’s answer to the landscape of the Great Plains, flowing from Canada to the Coastal Plains of Texas, and the people who live there, who work the land, and who worship together in community on the Sabbath. These communities hold a rich heritage of faith and devotion that is an American story. The author's desire is to tell it with a Quaker simplicity and sincerity that honors his own family’s legacy. The poetry draws from a rich literary, artistic, and liturgical language, which reveals people of faith, and an intimate connection with the land that flourishes still, caring for and cultivating the American plains and prairies to help feed a 21st century world.
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A PILGRIMAGE OF CHURCHES will take the Reader on a powerful and transformative journey far into the heart of old and devotional America: to where the inspired and believing once established their vision of a true Jerusalem and of their Christ upon the coastal plains of Texas and up northward onto the plains of Kansas. This book is a gentle masterpiece of perception and human record, bringing back to life a world that has vanished from our Twenty-First Century culture. Like an ancient, illuminated manuscript this book will deliver lightness and conviction into your hands and eyes. Starbuck is a master of poetic tradition and diction, and his delivery of these prophetic songs – which vividly and precisely depict a forsaken time – returns us to those sacred grounds. About the author himself we can most certainly say that, ‘his aim is true’.
—Kevin McGrath, Harvard University
We all know the people of the Midwest have raised corn and crops forever, but they also raised churches, churches of many denominations, Methodist, Catholic, AME, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist. On his midwestern and western pilgrimage, Ron Starbuck found both images and words that capture the holiness in both sacred and secular places in the middle of America.
In this collection, it almost feels as if Ron Starbuck has caught time sleeping as he delivers up images that seem pulled not just from the center of the country, but from the middle of the last century.
Time is stopped here and frozen, in the silvery light of these photographs, which alongside Ron Starbuck's poems that read like Biblical passages “pour out a radiance, A great reverence” for these far-flung and spiritual places.
Whether he is photographing tiny chapels and small-town clapboard churches or parking lots of John Deere tractors or plowed fields and pastures, these black and white images and liturgical-sounding poems evoke the same stark America as the WPA teams. Ron Starbuck is Walker Evans and James Agee rolled into one here, a new documentarian for a forgotten era of divine places.
In this collection, it almost feels as if Ron Starbuck has caught time sleeping as he delivers up images that seem pulled not just from the center of the country, but from the middle of the last century.
Time is stopped here and frozen, in the silvery light of these photographs, which alongside Ron Starbuck's poems that read like Biblical passages “pour out a radiance, A great reverence” for these far-flung and spiritual places.
Whether he is photographing tiny chapels and small-town clapboard churches or parking lots of John Deere tractors or plowed fields and pastures, these black and white images and liturgical-sounding poems evoke the same stark America as the WPA teams. Ron Starbuck is Walker Evans and James Agee rolled into one here, a new documentarian for a forgotten era of divine places.
—Elizabeth Cohen
The Family on Beartown Road: A Memoir of Love and Courage
The Family on Beartown Road: A Memoir of Love and Courage
RON STARBUCK is the Publisher/CEO/Executive Editor of Saint Julian Press, Inc., in Houston, Texas; a poet and writer, an Episcopalian, and author of There Is Something About Being An Episcopalian, When Angels Are Born, Wheels Turning Inward, and most recently A Pilgrimage of Churches, four rich collections of poetry, following a poet’s mythic and spiritual journey that crosses easily onto the paths of many contemplative traditions.
He has been deeply engaged in an Interfaith-Buddhist-Christian dialogue for many years, and holds a lifelong interest in literature, poetry, Christian mysticism, comparative literature and religion, theology, and various forms of contemplative practice. He's work as a poet is known for leaning into these monastic poetic traditions, with an understanding that sacred scripture and liturgy are poetic in nature.
He has been a contributing writer for Parabola Magazine. And has had poems, translations, and essays published in Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature, an interview and poem in The Criterion: An Online International Journal in English, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, ONE from MillerWords (Feb. 2016), and Pirene's Fountain, Volume 7 Issue 15, from Glass Lyre Press (Oct. 2014), Levure Littéraire (France – 2017 & 2018), La Piccioletta Barca (Nov. 2019), and The Tulane Review (Fall 2019). A collection of essays, poems, short stories, and audio recordings are available on the Saint Julian Press, Inc., website under Interconnections.
Forming an independent literary press to work with emerging and established writers and poets, and tendering new introductions to the world at large in the framework of an interfaith and cross-cultural literary dialogue has been a long-time dream. Ron is a former, Vice President with JP Morgan Chase and public sector Information Technology — Executive Program Manager with Harris County, Texas.
He has been deeply engaged in an Interfaith-Buddhist-Christian dialogue for many years, and holds a lifelong interest in literature, poetry, Christian mysticism, comparative literature and religion, theology, and various forms of contemplative practice. He's work as a poet is known for leaning into these monastic poetic traditions, with an understanding that sacred scripture and liturgy are poetic in nature.
He has been a contributing writer for Parabola Magazine. And has had poems, translations, and essays published in Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature, an interview and poem in The Criterion: An Online International Journal in English, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, ONE from MillerWords (Feb. 2016), and Pirene's Fountain, Volume 7 Issue 15, from Glass Lyre Press (Oct. 2014), Levure Littéraire (France – 2017 & 2018), La Piccioletta Barca (Nov. 2019), and The Tulane Review (Fall 2019). A collection of essays, poems, short stories, and audio recordings are available on the Saint Julian Press, Inc., website under Interconnections.
Forming an independent literary press to work with emerging and established writers and poets, and tendering new introductions to the world at large in the framework of an interfaith and cross-cultural literary dialogue has been a long-time dream. Ron is a former, Vice President with JP Morgan Chase and public sector Information Technology — Executive Program Manager with Harris County, Texas.
St. John Lutheran Church, Easton Township, Kansas
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Saint Julian Press — Poetry-In-Film Productions on YouTube
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Publication Date: October 15, 2021
Paperback: 140 Pages with 62 Black & White photographs and 38 poems, 12” x 9” Inches landscape. As a Fine Art Photography & Poetry collection the book is printed on high quality premium 80# gloss EuroArt Plus, 556 PPI paper, and 12 point CIS white stock with gloss lay flat lamination and color end leaf paper. The October 15, 2021, book release is a limited first run, first edition – first printing of the book. Suggested Retail Price: $60.00 ISBN-13: 978-1733023399 Library of Congress Control Number: 22021940319 Publisher: Saint Julian Press, Inc. – Houston, Texas Fine Art Photography Printing: Bookmobile – Minneapolis, Minnesota Book Distribution: Itasca Books - Minneapolis, Minnesota For a PDF Advance Copy - Galley, please contact: Ron Starbuck. |
PRESS RELEASE PDF
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FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY
Limited Collector's Edition — with High Resolution Glossy Photography
12 x 9 Inch Landscape Coffee Table Style Book
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FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY
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Apple Books with Audio Recordings for Each Poem
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Available Through ~ Ingram Content Group ~ Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ IndieBound ~ Fine Book Distributors & Retailers
Saint Julian Press, Inc. * Houston, TX 77008 * Ron Starbuck ~ Publisher-CEO
Email: ronstarbuck@saintjulianpress.com * Web: www.saintjulianpress.com
Saint Julian Press, Inc. * Houston, TX 77008 * Ron Starbuck ~ Publisher-CEO
Email: ronstarbuck@saintjulianpress.com * Web: www.saintjulianpress.com
SAINT JULIAN PRESS, INC. © 2022
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This arrangement does help to sustain the press and allow us to publish more books by more authors.