Mary Catherine Harper

Some Gods Don't Need Saints Mary Catherine Harper

Mary Catherine Harper's Some Gods Don't Need Saints, a poetry collection concerned with human conceptions of divinity, gives voice to speakers who re-imagine humanity/divinity relationships in Biblical stories (e.g. Job, Esau and Jacob, Ruth and Naomi, Adam and Eve), the Keresan mythology of Grandmother Spider, and other myths and legends. This collection has been described by Howard McCord, author of The Man Who Walked to the Moon and recipient of the Nancy Dasher Book Award and NEA Fellowship, as "a brilliant and moving book honoring the old gods, who, if forgotten by most and seldom nourished by an invocation or an honorific nod, still attend all our doings carefully. They are eternally patient with the errors humans make trying to understand the spider's track, or the heft of a stone face held in a wondering hand."