David Wright's A Liturgy for Stones does not fit easily into poetic categories. Though they take up biblical texts and themes, the poems are not especially devotional. Nor are the poems merely academic, though they demonstrate considerable poetic craft. Instead, these poems suggest fresh ways of poetically singing within and against the Christian tradition.

The title poem meditates on Jesus' warning that if his disciples stay quiet, "The very stones will cry out." And the voices of these stones, joined with those of biblical characters, reluctant believers, and exultant skeptics suggest how poetry might still have a place in the life of the faithful if they dare to "Let untamed language fall on unsuspecting tongues."

Samples
from A Liturgy for Stones:

"Veni, Sancte, Spiritus" and "Electric Glossolalia" (DreamSeeker Magazine, January 2002)

"A Map of the Kingdom" and "Lydia's Song" (Mennonite Life, December 2001)

"A Selfish Sonnet of Thanksgiving" (The Avatar Review, Summer 2002)

"Old Women in Eliot Poems" (3rd Muse, February 2002)

"For John" Prairie Poetry (May 2001).

"Altar Piece" and "Like Trees Planted by Streams of Water" featured recently on Verse Daily.

"As the stones themselves cry out--even in their stillness--their praise, so do these sculpted poems manifest--even in their praise--a glimpse of holy stillness. In A Liturgy for Stones, David Wright has come upon a rich and enriching vein whereby our daily narratives may be seen to partake of the greater story, our many comedies and tragedies to partake of the One."

—Scott Cairns, author of Philokalia: New & Selected Poems

"David Wright's poems are alive with music and motion. His voice in A Liturgy for Stones finds daring pitches and a force of rhythm, disrupting our comfort zones. Wright sings his interrogations and affirmations of earth, body, and spirit, recognizing that much is hidden, and that much can be found in God's 'kingdom of margins.' These beautiful and lucid poems call us to unlock our own tongues and to sing what is true, and then to listen to the echoing silence, a place of "terrible holiness, a lush and delicate calm."

—Jean Janzen author of Tasting the Dust and A Snake in the Parsonage

"David Wright moves from meditation to word-magic in a scenario where every day offers ample opportunity for midrash. The stones do speak when properly addressed in that curious mixture of wonder and praise that we call poetry. "

—Dan Guillory, author of The Alligator Inventions and When the Waters Recede

"[T]he emergence of a writer who reveals himself in a kaleidoscopic bouncing between rest and activity to be intensely, sometimes cautiously, sometimes overly, but always forgivably human. Here is a poet who is not embarrassed to declare his faith nor to poke a little gentle fun at its earthly vehicle. . . .These poems are not easy, but there is enough emotional, psychological, linguistic, and maybe even spiritual weight to repay a serious effort to penetrate them to their deepest level. The easy ear of the poet helps, with generous helpings of hard rhyme, slant rhyme, and an assonance as natural as birdsong or the ingenuous speech of beasts."
—Sandy McKinney, in The Alsop Review

In A Liturgy for Stones, David Wright explores his world with spare, strong words. He sees the undersides of things, like the hard-to-clean black marks made by the pastor’s shoes in the baptism tank, or the unlooked for stories, like the observations of the prodigal son’s mother. These poems have an edge to them, an underlying anger at injustice and irrelevance, or an ironic sense of humour about the limitations of our ability to apprehend the mysteries of life in the world God created. These poems elicit in me a slightly uncomfortable thrill, like those “aha” moments in good parables.

—Lori Matties, MB Herald

Though many if not most of the poems in A Liturgy for Stones might be classified as "religious," or at least underpinned by Biblical and other Judeo-Christian reference points, Wright is not at all predictable in his premises or conclusions. There is no party line to tow here; rather there is a precise and talented poet and thinker considering his world through humanely reverent lenses. . . . David Wright's poetry does not try to separate itself from us through a celebration of its own splendors, but rather creates a kind of splendor by refusing to separate itself from us, no matter how tempting that separation sometimes must be.

—Joe Benevento, Green Hills Literary Lantern

Poetry, in other words, is a way of finding what you didn't know you were looking for. . . The poems in A Liturgy for Stones, often beginning in a flash of insight and wriggling towards a new understanding, give the reader a palpable sense of that poetic discovery and reveal, in the process, a powerful literary imagination. . . Spirited and teeming with ideas, Wright's A Liturgy for Stones demonstrates how poetry can be an engaged and vital space. His is a compelling emerging voice that deserves to be listened to attentively and with care.