Every December, many Vishnu temples across the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu celebrate a twenty-day festival of recitation. The festival commemorates the Tamil devotional poetry of a group of twelve poet-saints, the āḻvār, who lived some 1200 years ago. At many temples it is a lavish affair, featuring elaborate processions, ornamentations and ritual enactments, drawing crowds of devotees from near and far. At one such beloved, large, and architecturally spectacular Vishnu temple in the small village of Tirukkurungudi, nestled against the lush backdrop of the undulating Western Ghats, a carefully choreographed Festival of Recitation unfolds, drawing devotees and priests into the poetic world of the questing āḻvār-poet. In her richly illustrated presentation, Archana Venkatesan, Professor of Religious Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis, ushers in a world of recitation and poetry, to experience alongside the devotees what it means to live, at least momentarily, in the world of mystical love poems.