To Phrase a Prayer for Peace wrestles with what is holy, with the world as we humans have constructed it, with war and violence, with love and friendship, with communication between people (and nations) who may not agree. Donna Spruijt-Metz writes about being comfortable while others are dying-expressing the felt fears of a Jew and the need for a Jewish homeland while holding a profound empathy for Palestinians who also need a homeland. She grapples with scripture and the Psalms, inviting the reader to wish for peace with her and to explore all the complexities that peace entails-between nations, between religions, within families, and among friends.
"To Phrase a Prayer for Peace is exactly the kind of book I wish to see in the world amid these dark and divisive days."
- Jared Harél, author of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject
"It's easy to deride "praying for peace" as a quixotic absurdity in the face of the empire and its industry of mass violence. But Donna Spruijt-Metz's diary poems are a frank dialogue with the Psalms during the ongoing Gaza conflagration, engaging in that ancient practice of calling out to the divine, and calling out the divine, in a time of divine silence, to ask for an end to this violence, to imagine a path forward."
- Philip Metres, author of Fugitive/Refuge
"Subtle, delicate, and capable of balancing paradoxes, Spruijt-Metz's voice holds a striking contemporary freshness even as David's ancient Psalms serve as her point of departure and time and again, she appeals to the Divine to save the world from the sorrows of war."
- Yehoshua November, author of The Concealment of Endless Light
