Apocalyptic Fervor

Visions of the End Times

Ken Bazyn

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781666748420
  9781666748437
• eBook ISBN:
  9781666748444
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Religious Poetry
• Index: Literature

The late Second Temple period in Judaism and the early Christian era witnessed the rise of apocalyptic literature, its zenith being the New Testament book of Revelation. Among its prominent features are the disparity between this world and the next, a vision of God as coming judge at history's culmination, and the call to perseverance during times of adversity. Bazyn's poems are introduced by an elaborate fantasy of what heaven might be like, citing a number of Christian writers throughout the centuries as well as sources from other world religions. Then you'll encounter verse on the macabre dance of death; Orwellian tremors of totalitarianism; premonitions of madness; visits from an alien world; a house of the Lord utterly destroyed; lingering ambivalence regarding a loving, but holy, God; a triumphant baaing lamb; the cavortings of a holy fool; a final gaze at earthly life from eternity's shore; believers undergoing continuous divinization. Bright 35mm color slides deepen the surreal atmosphere, enabling you to feel the thin boundary between the ephemeral and eternal. Qualms of conscience and mortality take center stage as the entire book turns into a searching exercise for the reader's spiritual formation.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• A Day Like No Other
• Deceitful Time
• All Is Smoke
• Time Is . . . .
• The Whining Mandolin
• The Dance of Death
• Delusion
• A Night of Peacock Eyes
• The Reluctant Left Hand of My God
• “There Was Silence . . .”
• The Meaning Flowed On
• On a June Evening
• “Nichts als Mauern”1
• Orwellian Tremors
• Now Is Madness Come of Age
• I Shall Go Berserk
• Touching Bottom
• The Light Which Had Been So Keen and Focused
• Night Turbulence
• Ludicrous Babylon
• An Oblong, Inscrutable Alien
• Narcissism
• Marital Ecology
• Our Heap of Merits
• Approach-Avoid God
• Disembodied You
• The Lingerers at Krakatoa
• The House of the Lord
• A Redemptorist Monk
• My Soul
• Penetrating Light
• Variations on a Medieval Legend
• Morituri te Salutamus
• O Night That Doomed Leviathan
• The Apocalypse
• If I Could But Touch Peace . . .
• The Paschal Candle
• A Baaing Lamb
• How Shall the Dead Arise?
• Revelation 7:9–10
• To What Shall I Compare the Kingdom of Heaven?
• Come, Holy Spirit
• A Rabelaisian Yuletide
• Iacta Alea Esto
• Numeral Occult
• Soul Vibes
• Yurodivy: The Holy Fool
• That Amethyst Chariot
• When the Soul Quits the Earthly Body
• On Eternity’s Shore Looking Back
• II Corinthians 3
• Listing of Photographs
• Works Cited