Professor of English Emeritus Paul Mariani has spent 50 years writing poetry that celebrates the vibrant sacramentality of life in the twilight of Modernity. His new book, The Mystery of It All: The Vocation of Poetry in the Twilight of Modernity (Paraclete Press, 2019), is a life-spanning collection of his prose explorations of what it means to be a person of wonder and imagination. Mariani is the author of 18 books, including biographies of poets Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Hart Crane, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and William Carlos Williams. His biography of Crane, The Broken Tower, was made into a film directed by and starring James Franco. Earlier this year, Mariani was honored with the Flannery O’Connor Lifetime Achievement Award.