It occurred to me just now as I was typing it that I could quibble with the title of this anthology. The date refers to the lives of the poets included, not to the dating of the poems. The oldest of the poets, Paul Mariani, was born in 1940. So I doubt that any poem in the book was published before, say, 1965. But there was certainly Christian poetry published by American poets between 1940 and 1965 (and after, of course)--Robert Lowell's, for instance. So I could quibble, but I won't, because that would be petty and obnoxious. It's probably a scholarly convention and I'm revealing my ignorance. Please consider this as a pedantic clarification. Not to be confused with a quibble.

The title might come as a surprise to anyone without particular interest in both Christianity and poetry. That person might be unaware that the two have had anything much to do with each other over the past eighty years or so. And it certainly is true that most poetry that has met with any kind of positive reception in the literary world at large is either non- or anti-Christian, as is the case with literature in general. Another sort of person, one interested in poetry but not Christianity, might assume that the category of "Christian poetry" would include only or mainly devotional work, and probably not be very good. 

The first person would be mistaken, the second person very mistaken. These poets--and, implicitly, the editors--have all, consciously or instinctively, grasped the correct answer to the question, discussed to the point of being tiresome, "What is Catholic/Christian literature?" The answer is not "Christians writing about Christian things" but something closer to "the world seen through Christian eyes." In general this means that the eyes are those of a Christian, but even that isn't necessarily the case; they may belong to someone who is not Christian but is capable of seeing the world that way. Some of the poets here have a fairly loose connection to the faith: Andrew Hudgins, for instance, says "I'm not sure I would invite myself to the party" of Christian poets. But he has a poem called "Praying Drunk" which begins "Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk."

Many, perhaps most--I didn't attempt a tally--write from clear and definite belief. Some write explicitly about questions of faith, some about pretty much anything that concerns them. Robert B. Shaw, for instance, writes about "Things We Will Never Know":

What became of Krishna
the blue-point Siamese
strayed circa Nineteen
Fifty-five in Levittown

....

Why did Lester leave the Church

Why did his wife leave  him
Why didn't she leave him sooner
What made him drink like that
How much did the children know

Who built Stonehenge    Why

Notice the absence of question marks--these are not really questions, but items in the list named in the title. Only in the last of a dozen or so four-line stanzas does the poem hit us with one that affects us directly and personally, and, obliquely, hint at one of the Big Questions which Christianity poses to us all. 

Technically, the poems are all over the place. There are a good many poems in traditional forms, a good many in free verse. Some take what I think of as the typical approach of the contemporary lyric poem, which is a close look at some fairly small thing or event, usually implicitly, sometimes explicitly, suggesting some larger application or concern. Jeanne Murray Walker's "Little Blessing for My Floater" is one such. Some begin with a wider narrative or meditative scope, like David Middleton's "The Sunday School Lesson":

The room was full of thirteen-year-old boys
Unhappily constrained by polished shoes,
Bow ties, oiled hair, and orders against all noise,
And one eternal hour of Good News.

Some take on the big subjects directly, like Dana Gioia's "Prayer At Winter Solstice":

Blessed is the road the keeps us homeless.
Blessed is the mountain that blocks our way.

More than a few are funny, like Marilyn Nelson's "Incomplete Renunciation," which would have to be quoted in full for you to get it, and though it's only a dozen or so lines I probably shouldn't do that.

What they all have in common are skill, imagination, and a consciousness of the depth of the human condition. That is an echo of a definition of religion given long ago by the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich: "the dimension of depth in human life" (quoted from memory, please excuse any inaccuracy). It's a very poor and inadequate definition of religion, but it's certainly an aspect of religious consciousness. And there's not a poem here which doesn't possess it.

I think my taste skews a bit toward the older poets, those within a decade or so of my own age. But it's only a skew; there are some fine poems here by younger and much younger poets. James Matthew Wilson, for instance, who is very prominent on the Catholic literary scene these days, was born in 1975, which though it makes him young in my eyes puts him well into middle age. The last half-dozen or so poets in the collection are the age of my children. This sort of thing has been disconcerting to me since people of their age began to take on significant roles in society, and continues to disconcert me as I slip further along into irrelevant old age. 

Lovely cover, too, don't you think?

Each poet's entry is preceded by a page or two of biography and excellent commentary by the editors. (Personally I prefer to read at least one of the poems, then the commentary.) These are not credited so I don't know which editor wrote which introduction, assuming one of them didn't do them all; I didn't notice any difference in style or approach among them, but then I wasn't looking for it. I am impressed by the amount of work that went into this collection: there are several dozen poets, and most of them have published multiple books. To have read all or most of these carefully enough to choose the poems and write the introductions was a massive labor, no doubt one of love.

Sally Thomas and Micah Mattix are both deeply knowledgeable, careful, and sensitive readers. Sally is an excellent poet (and fiction writer), as I noted here a couple of years ago, and also the co-proprietor, with Joseph Bottum, of the outstanding poetry Substack Poems Ancient and Modern. Michah Mattix is poetry editor of First Things and the author of a popular literary-cultural Substack called Prufrock. I have to admit that I don't read Prufrock, but it isn't because I doubt what seems to be a widely-held regard for it, but because it is, at least in part, a sort of clearing-house for items of literary interest, and I already feel that my reading attention is so painfully fragmented that I can't deal with another set of links. (I've gone so far as to install internet-blocking software on my computer to limit my ability to browse compulsively and shallowly when I'm supposed to be working.) 

So if you have much interest in the subject, you probably need this book. And while I'm at it, let me recommend Poems Ancient and Modern at least as strongly. Poetry is my chief literary interest now (a return to my teens and early twenties), so I do read every post, which is to say every poem, there, even though there is one every weekday, and I sometimes, or often, get behind. It's a continuing and pleasurable education, even for someone who has what is probably a more-than-usual acquaintance with poetry, beginning long ago with an undergraduate degree in English and several semesters of graduate work. What I just said about the team of Sally Thomas and Micah Mattix holds for Sally Thomas and Joseph Bottum. Their tastes and knowledge are extremely wide-ranging, and they have featured a number of poets of whom I had next-to-no knowledge, and a few of whom I had never heard at all. Mehetabel Wesley Wright is one of these. You'll find both the poem and the biography at that link interesting: yes, she was related to John and Charles Wesley, as their elder sister. Unhappy marriages seem to have run in the family.