Of Curses and Blessings

In this lyrical catalog of humanity's vices and virtues, the promise of free will swings back and forth between its two poles like a pendulum. Pulled by both gravity and grace, poet Joseph L. Bensinger charts these spiritual oscillations like planetary orbits. These poems seek to show us how free will shapes our ideas of self and our relationships with each other-and how all of this in turn shapes the nature of the whole symbiotic universe around us. "You are a seedling / in the cosmic mesh / of possibilities," the poet says. In this reimagined second edition of Joseph L. Bensinger's Of Curses and Blessings, the riddle of human nature becomes the foundation for a coming-of-age mythology in which growth of the self is inextricably intertwined with the expansiveness of one's love for others and the conglomeration of one's faith in a cosmic design.