Brother Paul Quenon, who was inspired to write by his mentor Thomas Merton, says “the purpose of the monastic life in the modern world is to show that we don’t need a purpose. The purpose of life is life.”

Read four poems by Brother Paul Quenon, who entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, in 1958.

Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) has been described as "a poet of the cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness.”

Writer Mary Karr says what struck her about Catholicism "wasn't the grandeur of the Mass, it was the simple faith of the people" and "the carnality of the church. There was a body on the cross."

Watch much more of correspondent Judy Valente's conversation with Mary Karr about God, prayer, poetry, and the Catholic faith.

In a new book about inspirational poet Mattie Stepanek, who died in 2004, his mother Jeni writes about his short life and lasting legacy.

An 11-year-old autistic girl writes poetry about her inner world.

For many poets, believers and nonbelievers alike, it is possible to talk about the religious imagination they bring to apprehending reality and describing the world. Welsh Anglican priest and poet R.S. Thomas, for example, was one of the greatest poets of the absence of God.

At the memorial for the American dead of Vietnam, writes Lorrie Goldensohn, we meet as a community and are made to see that "we are always at one with the living and the dead."

An unstated Easter hope for eternal life runs through writer John Updike's work, from his famous early poem "Seven Stanzas at Easter" to "Endpoint," his final collection of poetry, published just a few months after his death.