Litany with Wings
BCC Press, 2022
Poems
Cover design by D. Christian Harrison
Book design by Andrew Heiss
Litany with Wings contains five sections of thirteen poems each, plus a poem that serves as a prologue for the collection and a poem that serves as an epilogue. Since many of the poems in the collection respond to, riff on, reference, or converse with other artworks, I’ve put together a digital companion for the book that includes the images, as well as some other notes.
Access the Litany with Wings Digital Companion.
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Litany with Wings is a book of contemplation and revelation.
Here, poet Tyler Chadwick meditates on a range of ideas central to his Mormon faith—the work of creation (divine and human), family life, community, grace, loss, memory, faith, scripture, prayer, theosis, godhood, and the divine feminine.
Tyler Chadwick’s latest work is a poetry collection aptly named Litany with Wings. Drawing inspirations from personal encounters with kindred souls, he takes flight across landscapes both inner and outer. In this way, Tyler seeks to join or link up (re-ligare) with a genuine religiosity: “the story we’re still trying to tell.”
–Alex Caldiero (aka The Sonosopher)
Senior Artist in Residence, Utah Valley University
Chadwick’s poems are stirring meditations on the rich complexities created at the intersection of the profane and the sacred. His vibrant imagery elucidates the magnitude of what can be contained in poesy; every small moment is a thread from which truth is composed and recomposed as it is reconsidered. Chadwick deftly weaves a world of mythic portent, inviting the reader to contemplate what makes us divine and what makes us human, and how the two can hardly bear to be untwined.
–Kathryn Knight Sonntag
Author, The Tree at the Center and The Mother Tree: Discovering the Love and Wisdom of Our Divine Mother
Tyler Chadwick’s Litany with Wings is a generous collection of poetry with more on its mind than poems. It speaks to a larger desire of the poet to reference and connect with other ideas, people, and objects. Several of the works were inspired by paintings and by movements within religious culture that seek to stretch and reshape it. Chadwick is an innate gatherer, an anthologizer, and a cheerleader. It is time to turn the megaphone around and to cheer for him and this stirring volume.
–Glen Nelson
Co-founder, Center for Latter-day Saint Arts
Tyler Chadwick is a brilliant and generous editor who has long championed Mormon poetry, from Fire in the Pasture (2011) to Dove Song (2018). Now, reading Litany with Wings, I know I’m in the hands of an exquisite craftsman who’s refined and honed each word, each line, each poem, each sequence of poems–with extraordinary care. Chadwick’s newest collection is a string of perfectly polished pearls, ready to thumb as rosary. Readers will want to savor this word-rich book slowly, lingering over lines that are luscious in the mouth. I’m especially drawn to Chadwick’s poems that dwell on the Sacred Feminine. He addresses God the Mother as “First Light, First Milk, First Hunger, First Verb,” reimagines Her towards a fullness of being that will fill you with hope and delight.
–Dayna Patterson
Author, If Mother Braids a Waterfall