The Living Law

Praise for The Living Law

“With this debut collection, Jesse Butler is joining the growing group of Canadian poets who are taking poetry away from the academy and returning it to a broader audience of poetry lovers. Butler’s poems are thoughtful, well-crafted, and a pleasure to read.” — A.M. Juster, author of Wonder & Wrath

“This is a very fine book. Jesse Butler has put his mastery of traditional poetic form to good use in these varied reflections on faith, personal tragedy, encounters with nature, life in the modern Canadian suburbs and many other things. These poems reveal a mind expansively curious about the world and deeply attentive to it.” — Burl Horniachek, editor of To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry

“It’s not so often that a debut collection of poetry reveals a care for poetic forms, a clarity in book structure, and a serious grappling with large ideas. Jesse Keith Butler’s ambitious The Living Law reaches for the large: a world that lacks its Blake to etch fire in the mind; makeshift shelters in a modern landscape stripped of spirit and transcendence; the pulse of life below the world’s veneer; the living law as gateway onto a wide, windswept expanse. (And don’t miss the hermit’s donkeys!)” — Marly Youmans, author of Seren of the Wildwood

"These finely crafted poems cover road trips across Canada, a night of whiskey drinking with a buddy in an old church belltower, the joys and agonies of parenthood, and the inner lives of the Biblical patriarchs. Throughout, Butler renders relatable human experiences while displaying a strong grasp of the capacities and opportunities to be found within the limits of traditional English metre and rhyme." — Steven Searcy in Traces: A Canadian Journal of Christian Arts & Letters

"The title and theme of Butler's debut collection The Living Law is inspired by advice given to the poet by the dearly departed Steven Heighton. ... This is a theme that is applied in rich and diverse ways throughout the collection, the fruit of over two decades." — Daniel Bezalel Richardsen in Arc Poetry Magazine

"Jesse Keith Butler’s debut volume The Living Law exhibits an extraordinary mastery and inventiveness of form" — Clarence Caddell in The Brazen Head

"Butler’s poetry demonstrates an exceptional facility with form and an unerring ear for the natural rhythm of language. In this, his work compares favourably with his countryman, the ‘Bard of the Yukon, ’ Robert Service, especially in Butler’s 'The Hammer That Killed John Henry.'" — Shawn Phillip Cooper in The European Conservative