Awake My Heart: Psalms for Life - Softcover

With near-perfect pitch, Fred Bassett has fashioned the pungent, sharp-edged verses of Biblical poetry into well-crafted psalms of sorrow and psalms of praise. Together these psalms embrace an enormous range of emotions that cry out with utter directness for the reader to give them voice. - David Stern, Senior Editor Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster

The juxtapositions and rearrangements of Awake My Heart are startling in the best sense of the that word. They ask me to hear familiar lines anew, to draw new solace and power from them. Frederick Bassett imagines Job and Jeremiah singing a lamentation together, or Daniel entering a psalm. In this new poetry he creates, the sorrow rolls out like thunder; the praise lights up the sky. - Valerie Sayers, author of Brain Fever; Professor of English, University of Notre Dame

Frederick Bassett was born in Roanoke, Alabama in September of 1934 and is a Biblical scholar, professor and poet. He graduated with a BA from Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama and went on to receive BD and ThM degrees from Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, KY, and a PhD in Biblical Studies from Emory University in Atlanta, GA. He was Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Limestone College (1967-1988). Mr. Bassett is currently the Executive Director of the Hilton Head College Center and teaches at the Creative Retirement Center and in the Elderhostel Program of the college. In addition to publishing scholarly work, Bassett, has continued to publish poetry in literary magazines such as The Savannah Literary Journal and Negative Capability.

Mr. Bassett combines his love of both poetry and scripture in Awake My Heart: Psalms for Life which consists of 52 psalms arranged and edited from the poetry of the Bible for meditative and oral reading.

Frederick Bassett currently resides in Hilton Head, South Carolina with Peg, his wife of 42 years. They have twin sons, Michael and Jonathan, who are both pursuing graduate education.