As a green young man, Tyler fell in love and let that love overwhelm him. Shaken, he undertook a year of chastity and celibacy, a time to rethink love and marriage without the swirling emotions dredged up by sensual love. His account of this time is not a "how I survived without having sex" tell-all but a thoughtful and honest story of idealism and longing told by an adventuresome man with a thirst for holiness.
Along the way, Blanski speaks with insight and poetic sensibility about the human need for recognition and companionship, the passionate nature of Jesus, the history of both courtly love and crazy love, how our notions of love have been smudged by the myth of rugged individualism and how they can be redeemed.
Like a wonderful meal with an erudite friend,
Mud and Poetry leaves the reader with the warm glow of having experienced a taste of the kingdom of heaven.
