A Blessed Big Day

A Blessed Big Day brings together morethan fifty years of Ralph Brown'sChristmas poems. These poems arisefrom a variety of places, cultures andcircumstances. But while the subjectmatter of these verses spans the globefrom villages of southern Pakistan tothe woods of Royalston, Massachusetts,and ranges across an emotional scalefrom exhilaration to deep pain, they allreflect the transcendent joy, faith andreverence of an author who knows Jesusas God Incarnate, and who can writewith confidence:If Christmas means what one can doOr is shaped by good health or climeThen the essence of Christmas remainsWith man and the fortunes of time.These poems also testify to an Americanpoetic tradition, a tradition fading butstill alive, which treats poetry not justas the property of literary professionals,but also as an expression of the everyday lives, thought and experience ofordinary people. This is the traditionreflected in Best Loved Poems ofthe American People, and like thatanthology, Ralph Brown's poems,often written hastily in the midst of thedemands of work and circumstances,encourage us to keep alive the work ofthe everyday "rhymester."