The Generosity E-Book

Luci Shaw

• Herausgeber: Paraclete Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

"Rejoice, readers, as you receive the generosity of Luci Shaw's 76 new grace-infused parable poems. Autobiography once more merges with theology as these poems illuminate in splendored natural detail  how the seasons of creation  parallel and explain the seasons of her  life as a poet. Again and again, these poems shower us with glorious epiphanies from the natural world as it reflects God's generosity at work such as "spring's impossible news of green." These poems confirm that in poetry as in faith "ripeness is all." Like Wordsworth, Luci is celebrated for being a highly gifted landscape poet whose works are rich in imagery from the physical world—meadows filled with seeds, flowers, and also poems which are like "shoots" in Luci's writing life. Animals, too, great and small (beetles, cricket, and voles to bears and whales) play a major role in Luci's poetics of creation; God is likened to a great bear who leaves paw tracks for us to follow. In their deep faith and vibrant colors and designs, the poems in Generosity might be considered Luci's Book of Kells. We need to be like Luci's father who carried her poems in his briefcase to show his friends." —Philip C. Kolin, Author, Reaching Forever: Poems; Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus), University of Southern Mississippi

Leseprobe

Praise for

The Generosity

“Luci Shaw’s poems have always been welcome company, but how much more so in anxious times. There is a substantial comfort in her instinct for pleasure—in language, creation, people, habits. Her poems reveal a mind marked by humor, curiosity, good nature, and, well, generosity.

Each poem in this new book is a short lesson in noticing the world attentively, and a reminder to slow down and find the wonder, not just in the natural world, but in the less lovely things that make up our ordinary lives and duties.Time spent with Luci is time redeemed.”

—Mary Kenagy Mitchell, Executive Editor, Image

“Ah, The Generosity! Such an apt title for anything having to do with Luci Shaw and her vocation as a woman of letters, a woman of compassionate engagement with persons, places, and things. A profound generosity of attention, of vision, and of connection with other souls is what is most apparent in these epistles of the heart. Most moving to me—one of her thousands of longtime fans—is her candid appraisal of the human point of view, and her diligent νήψις, or watchfulness, assists our own seeing, our own slow trek to what may yet await us, after the in-between.”

—Scott Cairns, author of Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems and Anaphora

“A new book by Luci Shaw is a reason for rejoicing! She gives us a generous collection of lyric poems, reminiscent of Dylan Thomas, with lines such as ‘The air is full of green pilgrims who / walk together in this God light.’”

—Barbara Crooker, author of The Book of Kells and Some Glad Morning

“These poems illuminate how in poetry, as in faith, ‘ripeness is all.’ With Wordsworth, Luci is celebrated for being a gifted landscape poet, rich in imagery, but animals too, great and small (beetles, cricket, voles, bears, and whales) play a major role in her poetics of creation. God is likened to a great bear who leaves paw tracks for us to follow.In their deep faith and vibrant colors and designs, the poems in The Generosity might be considered Luci’s Book of Kells.”

—Philip C. Kolin, author of Reaching Forever: Poems and Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus), University of Southern Mississippi

ALSO BY LUCI SHAW

Poetry

Listen to the Green (1973)

The Secret Trees (1976)

The Sighting (1981)

Postcard from the Shore (1985)

Polishing the Petoskey Stone (1980)

Horizons (with Timothy Botts, 1992)

Writing the River (1994)

The Angles of Light (2000)

The Green Earth (2002)

Water Lines (2003)

Accompanied by Angels (2006)

What the Light Was Like (2006)

Harvesting Fog (2010)

Scape (2013)

Sea Glass (2016)

Eye of the Beholder (2018)

For Children

The Genesis of It All (with Huai-Kuang Miao and Mary Lane, 2006)

With Madeleine L’Engle

WinterSong (1996)

Friends for the Journey (1997)

A Prayerbook for Spiritual Friends (1999)

Nonfiction Prose

God in the Dark (1989)

Life Path (1992)

Water My Soul (1997)

The Crime of Living Cautiously (2005)

Breath for the Bones (2007)

Adventure of Ascent (2014)

Thumbprint in the Clay (2016)

The Generosity

Poems

Luci Shaw

For John, and John, and John

2020 First Printing

The Generosity: Poems

Copyright © 2020 by Luci Shaw

ISBN 978-1-64060-514-5

The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shaw, Luci, author.

Title: The generosity : poems / Luci Shaw.

Description: Brewster, Massachusetts : Paraclete Press, 2020. | Summary:

“In their deep faith and vibrant colors and designs, the poems in

Generosity might be considered Luci’s Book of Kells”-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020011849 (print) | LCCN 2020011850 (ebook) | ISBN

9781640605145 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781640605152 (epub) | ISBN

9781640605169 (pdf)

Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3569.H384 G46 2020 (print) | LCC PS3569.H384

(ebook) | DDC 811/.54--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020011849

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020011850

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete PressBrewster, Massachusettswww.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

Heaven deliver us, what’s a poet?Something that can’t go to bedwithout making a song about it.

—Dorothy L. Sayers

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The Need to Hold Still

How?

Virus

A Wild Embrace

Wave Action

Birds

The Plane Trees

“Every Creature is a Word of God”

Incoming Tide

Notes on a Cloudy Day

The Morning, Walking

The Creation

Moss, Orcas Island

While Reading The New Yorker

Pilgrim

White Space

Green, Springing

Enthusiasm

Heartwork

Dove

Morning Glory

The Meaning of Grass

Driving to Willapa

Meadow

Cow Sounds

Presence

The “O” in Hope

Free Rainfall

Midnight Rain

Language

First Draft

Rhythms

Modality

Berceuse

Unable to See Far

Dandelion

Lower Cataract Lake, Colorado

Driving to Winthrop

Dusk

Stream of Consciousness

Eve

Rumi’s Request

The Continent of Night

Diurnal

The Weight of Air

Speculating

What My Bones Tell Me

Her Dementia

On Being Tested

Telling the Dream

Midnight

Voice

Plunge

The Rules

Few Words

Wild

Family of Origin

Mirror Image

Some Mornings

Waterways

Benefits

Ground Cover

The Birds

Theme and Variations

Sky Blue

Quotidian

The Knitting

Parturition

Peaches

Multiples

The House Insects

More

Today

Relinquishment

Scant

The Child

Dark Friday

Psalmody

God the Bear

Pillars of the Church

“The Book of Kells”

Prophecy

Midwinter

“Climate Change Kills Antarctic Moss”

Winter in Chicago, 1960

Inupiat

Doctoring, Burma

Immigrant

Gallery

Driving the Cascades

Leaving

Promises

What to Listen For

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

One Christmas my husband and I sent out an original Christmas card, as we have done for as many years as I can remember. Someone had posted on Facebook an image of an ancient, weathered stump, in a forest, from which a fresh green leaf had shot up, like a mixed metaphor. It reminded us both of an image the prophet Isaiah had presented in Isaiah 1:11: “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a branch will bear fruit.” (see “Prophecy,” p. 109).

As usual, I wrote a poem about this happy surprise and John illustrated it. Often, I feel as old as the stump, and I’m as shocked as anyone that poems keep surfacing, arriving without strenuous labor on my part. I’m not claiming to be the fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy, or that I’m that burgeoning shoot of green, simply that I’m attempting something improbable at the age of 91, and that I feel enlivened as fresh shoots of words jump off pages at me, demanding my attention (see “While Reading The New Yorker” p. 28). This is but one of many examples of the sort of thing that keeps happening, sometimes at inconvenient intersections in my life.

The title of this collection, The Generosity, is a reminder of the prodigal green that flourishes everywhere in nature, despite our human depredations. And of the generosity of the Creator who planned the green of the world in a regenerative process that replenishes itself in cycles of seed and sprout—I’m still thinking of my Christmas card image—and growth and leaf and flower and fruit. This generosity gives us the means to celebrate not only our bountiful natural world, but our humanity with possibilities for displaying love and sharing and forgiveness.

I seem to write no matter the prevailing conditions. The Spirit has me tethered. I write out of enthusiasm rather than discipline. A snowstorm. A bad cold. Visitors. Grocery shopping. Needing a nap. Driving in the country. Cooking dinner. Making our bed (or feeling the guilt of leaving it unmade). Immediacy is my mistress, so what I am doing at my age makes me seem like a rebellious teen let loose on the world. It’s a bit of a stimulant in that I feel high when the words are charging into my mind, demanding entrance.