Touching Our Souls through Poetry and Theater

is Volume II in a three-volume series, titled Reflections on Literature: Exploring Meanings and Messages. Volume I, The Modern Novel from the Roaring Twenties to the Mythic West, was published in 2023 by Dorrance Publishing Co. It contains essays about the literature of the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, writers of the American West, and George Orwell. Volume II has two parts: The Significance of Poetry and The World as Stage--Drama. The poetry section describes poems by Maya Angelou, Mary Oliver, William Blake, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, and a discussion of a wide range of poems, such as William Wordsworth, T. S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, and others. The drama section focuses on Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Shakespeare's tragic and comic visions. As with Volume I, this volume is intended for the general reader who appreciates good literature. These writings are not academic exercises but rather a series of discussions about some of our very best writers--their lives and works. Van Dellen seeks to address why literature matters.