A Tormented Soul

Drawing upon his extraordinary life growing up in Italy, studying the classics at St. Louis University in Naples, and becoming ordained as a Vocationist priest, Fr. Virgil Furfaro shares his innermost thoughts and emotions in this stirring collection of poetry, A Tormented Soul. Furfaro is a true renaissance man-a "consummate doer, thinker, and dreamer" as described by one of his parishioners-and with his poetry proposes a return to the classical ideals, ones that will lead the sterile modern age back to the great values and legends of the past. With his nostalgic look toward the ancient world, Furfaro proposes that yesterday's poetry become today's reality. Of his poetry, Furfaro writes that it "is born from combining the fertile moments of my mind with a psychological, physical, and spiritual anguish that has characterized and tormented me for most of my life." This statement is personified within such poems as "A Cross to See" which explores not only this holiest of Christian symbols, but Furfaro's own tribulations and "Disenchantment," a haunting verse that reveals the deceptiveness of nature. At once powerful in scope, yet elegant in its simplicity, A Tormented Soul reaches to the very essence of our souls, plucks the strings of our hearts, and sets us upon the path to enlightenment.