Dietrich Bonhoeffer's prison poems

the long version

"In the face of the horrors of the Nazi regime, the spirit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer burned its brightest. From his cell in Flossenburg Prison, where he awaited execution for conspiring to assassinate Adolf Hitler, this beloved pastor, theologian, writer, and voice of Christian conscience wrote ten powerful poems, charged with the white-hot emotions and disarming candor of a man who lived and ultimately died by the truth. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Prison Poems is one of a trio of collected works that also includes Bonhoeffer's meditations on the Psalms and his Christmas sermons. This all-new translation shares the reflections of one of Christianity's most influential and convicting writers, complete with biographical information and a clear, illuminating commentary on each poem. These magnificent writings, written for friends and for his fiancee, Maria von Wedemeyer, reveal Bonhoeffer at his most intimate. Filled with contrasting imagery-with forlorn grays and stark blacks-and-whites set against life's most vivid colors-Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Prison Poems ranges, psalm-like, over the broad spectrum of human experience. Here, laid bare with moving eloquence, is the soul of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, twentieth-century martyr. And here is a celebration of life, faith, and hope, and of a victory that even the final enemy, death, cannot quench."--from the book jacket.