A Book of Hours

The Liturgy of the Hours divides the monastic day into moments of attention — Vigils, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline. Tim Dale borrows that structure not to write liturgy, but to follow where thirty-two poems went. A Book of Hours moves between Christian scripture, Orthodox and Islamic mysticism, and the ordinary business of being alive. The footnotes work the other way round: the poetry came first, and where it arrived somewhere ancient, the note marks the connection. Deeper reading is there for those who want it. Wonder is available for those who don't. This is the sacred half of a larger conversation, though the line between sacred and secular was never quite as clean as the division suggests.