Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019

This book is not presented as the work of a main-stream poet, for Prof. Higgs has pursued his poetry writing as an avocation, not a profession. He has opted for clarity over artistic sophistication, which may not commend him to contemporary critics and practitioners of poetic composition. At the same time, the author aspires to go beyond the kind of religious versification whose primary purpose is to convey a moral lesson through rhyming lines. That is not an ignoble objective, but it does not embrace a full participation in the linguistic complexity that characterizes serious poetry. Dr. Higgs seeks in his poems to combine the beauty of art with the beauty of Truth, and thereby to stimulate fresh attention to who God is and how He works with the people of His creation.

The style of Probing Eyes is mainly free verse, but with regular use of internal rhyme, assonance, and alliteration. The reader may see reflected in this style Prof. Higgs’s admiration for the poetry of Gerard Manly Hopkins, George Herbert, John Donne, and (in conversational tone) Robert Frost. But above all, the author hopes that readers find evidence of the influence of the Holy Spirit, ad gloriam dei.

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