The Alternative Soul Food Poems

The Alternative Soul Food Poems is Avant-garde poetry for the spirit, mind, and soul. Miles Brandon Battle was born in Michigan in 1971. He serves in missions and young adult leadership at the Washington Christian Center in Maryland. He graduated from the Howard University School of Architecture and Planning in 1996. Miles works as an architect, poet, and minster of the spoken word.

The Soul Food Series poems speak to a wide variety of ages and places along the path of life. An underlying melody naturally emanates out of each one, speaking to a select few souls who understand life and all its ebb and flow. I hope you are hungry for some soul food; there are more courses to come.

Ranging from Rumi, Kabir and Blake, to Rilke, Emily Dickinson and Paul Celan, this wide-ranging selection includes contemporary poets such as Jane Hirshfield, Denise Levertov, Thomas Merton and Mary Oliver, as well as by many lesser-known writers from all periods and places. The anthology opens with a series of poems on human life and spiritual sustenance, starting with Rumi: --This being human is a guest house. / Each morning a new arrival--The poems which follow explore many ways of keeping body and soul together, offering food for thought on knowing yourself, living with nature, who or what is God ... All are universal illuminations of the meaning of life, speaking to readers of all faiths as well as to searchers and non-believers.

The Soul Food Series poems speak to a wide variety of ages and places along the path of life. An underlying melody naturally emanates out of each one, speaking to a select few souls who understand life and all its ebb and flow. I hope you are hungry for some soul food; there are more courses to come.