Items related to What the Light Was Like: Poems
Synopsis
"This is what a sacramental poetry sounds like," says fellow poet Paul Mariani of Luci Shaw's new collection, What the Light Was Like. Shaw holds up both world and words to the light, revealing to us what has been there all along and teaching us how to see it for ourselves--with honesty, precision and patience.
Tenting, Burr Trail, Long Canyon, Escalante
Even when I close my eyes, even later in
the tent, dreaming, I see banks and rivers running red.
My blood has drunk color from the stones as if
it were the meal I needed. I am ready to eat
any beauty--these vistas of stars, storms.
The mesas and vermillion cliffs. The light they magnify
into the canyon. The echoes, the distances.
The rocks carved with ancient knowledge.
But after vast valleys I am so ready for this
low notch in the gorge, the intimate cottonwoods
lifting their leafy skirts and blowing their small
soft kisses into my tent on the wastland's
stringy breath. The spaces between the gusts are rich
with silence. I am ready to stay in this one place, sleep,
dream, breathe the grace of wind and earth that is
never too much, and more than I will ever need.
In this parchment land, the scribble
and blot of junipers and sagebrush--each crouched
separate, rooted in its own desert space--
spreads low to the sand, holding it down
the way the tent pegs anchor my tent, keep it
from blowing away. The way I want my words
to hold, growing maybe an inch a year,
grateful for the least glisten of dew.
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From the Back Cover
"This is what a sacramental poetry sounds like," says fellow poet Paul Mariani of Luci Shaw's new collection, What the Light Was Like. Shaw holds up both world and words to the light, revealing to us what has been there all along and teaching us how to see it for ourselves--with honesty, precision and patience.
"When William Stafford died, I wondered who there was to carry on in his spirit--humane, attentive, droll, faithful, one for whom writing poetry was as natural as breathing. And, reading What the Light Was Like, I see it has been Luci Shaw all along.
Mark Jarman, author of To the Green Man and Body and Soul: Essays on Poetry
"This is what a sacramental poetry sounds like. In What the Light Was Like, Luci Shaw holds up the world and words to the light, and the light in turn gathers into a marvelous translucency to reveal what is there if only we will take the time and effort to rinse our eyes and look. This is her strongest book of poems yet, page after page gifting us with one authentic and felicitous revelation after another. Read her. She just might change the way you see what's there before you."
Paul Mariani, author of Thirty Days and Deaths & Transfigurations: Poems
"I have been reading Luci Shaw's books of poems for thirty-five years or so, each book a reliable companion in exegeting the word and presence of God even as I live it. Here's the latest: I turn a page and see a piece of creation that I had seen but not seen, recognize a soul's syllable that I had heard but not heard--resurrection poems."
Eugene H. Peterson, translator of The Message
"Luci Shaw's poems are as fresh as today's news and as timeless as the mountains and waters of her Pacific Northwest. This collection promises and delivers light, and much more: heart, shadow, nuance, the grace of a world keenly observed and shared."
Michael Wilt, editor, NimbleSpirit.com
"In Luci Shaw's poems, which manage the almost impossible feat of being sacerdotal without being sanctimonious, God reveals himself through nature: 'In the clasp of two/ saber-shaped leaves heaven looked like/ the gaze of God peering through the eye of a needle'--and often through the landscape of the poet's beloved Pacific Northwest. But the love is not held in a safe loop between the God of nature and the poet; it is directed in turn toward others. 'Remember,' the poet tells us, 'love is made for something dire.'"
Andrew Hudgins, author of Ecstatic in the Poison and Babylon in a Jar
"Lovely, original, deeply felt work from one of America's most thoughtful spiritual poets. Luci Shaw once again startles us awake with her great talent and profound insights."
Philip Zaleski, editor, The Best American Spiritual Writing series
About the Author
Luci Shaw is a poet, essayist, teacher and retreat leader. Author of a number of nonfiction books and eight volumes of poetry, she serves as Writer in Residence at Regent College (Vancouver, British Columbia). Her poems have appeared in several anthologies and in publications such as Books & Culture, The Christian Century, Crux, Image, Radix, Rock & Sling, Nimble Spirit and Weavings.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherWordFarm
- Publication date2006
- ISBN 10 0974342793
- ISBN 13 9780974342795
- BindingPaperback
- LanguageEnglish
- Number of pages80
- Rating
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