IN WHOM IS MY DELIGHT is a collection of five chapbooks written between 2007 and 2015 by underground poet, and sometimes performer, Tad Cornell (T. H. Cornell). These modern sagas exalt reality and exult in the unity of goodness, truth, and beauty. Combining a Catholic sensibility, in the spirit of G. K. Chesterton, with a contemporary idiom, this narrative adventure celebrates the mystery of Christ and the glory of the English language. "Spectaculum" is an extended poem cycle journeying into the hidden life of Nazareth. "The Red Lawn" is a social worker's interior monologue during a day of crisis, employing Dante's rhyme scheme in The Divine Comedy. "Stooped in My Brain's Amygdala" is free verse in nine cantos ala a modern William Blake, documenting a researcher's epic struggle for sanity. "Suite No. 1 for Vertical Table in G Major" is a confession in six movements. "The Garden of the Moon" is a collection of seventeen English sonnets written "to the body," meant as homage to both Shakespeare's genius and the wisdom of John Paul II.
About the Author: Tad Cornell (T. H. Cornell) spent his childhood until age twelve in Germany where his father worked for the US State Department (in actuality he was an agent in the CIA, as Cornell later learned). As a child actor in Germany, Tad appeared in a number of productions at the Frankfurt Playhouse, and starred each Christmas season in the Gian Carlo Menotti opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors. His inter-spiritual explorations have taken him to Hong Kong, where he taught English in a Chinese middle school; a Trappist monastery in upstate New York, where he lived as a novice monk; Rome, where he studied theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum); the streets of Manhattan and Houston, on behalf of charities advocating for homeless youth; and to his home base in Philadelphia, where he retired after several decades of teaching and directing social service programs for developmentally disabled adults. He has a BA in English from Temple University, a master's degree in special education from Antioch College, and a master's degree in English literature from Villanova University. Cornell's former wife, author Marly Cornell, wrote The Able Life of Cody Jane: Still Celebrating about the life of their daughter. Tad Cornell has essentially been an underground poet since producing his first book, Glance Over at These Creatures in 1977. Some of his poetry has been published conventionally; but much more of his work has been personally bound and hand-gifted, or presented in the form of poetry slams and avant garde stage productions (in Hong Kong, Houston, and Philadelphia areas), or on guitar and vocals as part of poetry/music fusion rock band, Edgar Allen and the Poettes, and other poetry performance ensembles. Tad Cornell lives currently in Ivy Hall, headquarters of the International Institute for Culture, a Catholic study center in Philadelphia.