In this, her tenth book of poetry, Wendy Mulhern chronicles the experience of grief, spiritual searching and sustenance, and healing after the death of her daughter.
As a poet, the author's discipline is to write a poem each day. Her primary criterion while writing is honesty - that her poems explore the landscape of truth, as precisely as she can understand it, at whatever level of experience is accessible at the moment. Therefore, her daily poems depict the terrain of her life more vividly than a diary might.
Some poems in this collection reflect the altered state and changed perspective that such a loss bring on. Many show the spiritual support that allowed her to find meaning in the place her life was shattered. Many are a tribute to her daughter's wonderful spirit.
She hopes this book will be meaningful to others - those who have experienced deep loss, those who know deep love, and those who yearn to understand the experience of others, to stand with them.
Artist Susanna Maria Weiss captures the spirit of the author's daughter Heather, and of the experience of this passage.
Wendy Mulhern is a poet. She writes a poem a day, and publishes her poems on her blog at wendymulhern.com, where you can also find information about her print publications. This is her 10th book of poetry. She is now homesteading with her husband in Oregon. They lost their daughter, Heather, in 2018, when she was 25. Their son is a musician and renaissance thinker, living in Massachussetts.
Susanna Maria Weiss is an Artist, with all her heart. A native of Germany, she first came to the US as an exchange student, but it was the magnificent beauty of the raw landscapes that brought her back several years later permanently, and eventually to her beloved Oregon. Besides being an illustrator, she is a painter and a sculptor. She finds her inspiration in close communication with nature, inviting Nature's beauty to reveal its essence and patterns to be captured on canvas, wood, paper or clay. Her attraction to this publication of poems was both personal and spiritual. The poet and her husband are friends with the artist, and the artist had briefly met their daughter. Contact the artist through her website: susanna-maria-artist.com