Eye of the Beholder

by Luci Shaw

Overview

Luci Shaw is now 90 years old. The author of more than 35 collections of poetry and creative non-fiction over the last five decades, she describes her dedication to this art as a burden to “speak into a culture that finds it hard to listen.” This collection of new poems — all composed over the last two years — is in many ways the culmination of a stunning career. The joy and responsibility of the poet is to focus on particulars within the universe, finding fragments of meaning that speak to the imagination. Ordinary things may reveal the extraordinary for those willing to take time to investigate and ponder. In this fresh collection of poems, Luci Shaw practices the art of seeing, and then writing what she sees, realizing that beauty is often focused in the Eye of the Beholder. Eye of the Beholder is meant to awaken in readers awareness of the extraordinary in the ordinary. They will find in this collection a focus for meditation and be excited into their own imaginative writing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640602472
Publisher:	Paraclete Press
Publication date:	10/16/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Luci Shaw was born in London, England, in 1928. A poet and essayist, since 1986 she has been Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver. Author of over thirty-five books of poetry and creative non-fiction, her writing has appeared in numerous literary and religious journals. In 2013 she received the 10th annual Denise Levertov Award for Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. She lives with her husband, John Hoyte, in Bellingham, WA.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Prophets and Poets ix

Eye of the Beholder xiv

I The Pulse of the World

Trail 3

Writing the Vision 4

Take these Words 5

Tree 7

Signs 8

Snow Geese 9

November 2 10

Anew 11

Prints 12

Walking, October 13

Emergence 14

Cataract 15

Signals 17

Reversals 18

Leaf 19

Riverside 20

Chalices 21

Bird Psalm 22

Dogwood Season 23

Poetry Workshop 24

Full Moon 25

Camping, Nooksack South Fork 26

Somewhere 27

II A Web of Longing

Filaments 31

Refuge 33

Sinai 34

Darkroom 36

Uncovering 37

Clear/Transparent 38

Regrettable 40

Sometimes a Prayer 42

Jungle Surgery 43

Attending 44

After a Time 45

Whelm 46

Where Color Is Spare 47

Stone Seeker 48

As the World Turns 50

At the Edge, Semiahmoo Spit 52

The White Moth of Ashland 53

Moon Power, Whidbey Island 54

Pond in Winter 55

Short Takes 56

Sunday in Advent 58

Rescue 59

The Many, the One 61

Before There Was Stuff 63

Treasury 64

The Germination 65

Organics 66

Summons 67

How to Grasp and Hold 68

Our Prayers Break on God 70

III Everything Belongs

January 73

New Every Morning 75

Cloth and Cup 76

Sugar Pea 77

French Lessons 78

Testify 79

Gratitude 80

The Lust for Astonishments 81

Road to Torino, British Columbia 82

January 25 85

Increments 87

Separation 89

Affirmation 90

Ceremony of Silence 91

True-ing 92

Expectation 94

For the Love of Logs 95

Dinner with the Cousins 97

Goldfish 98

Signs & Signatures 99

Yield 101

Contemplation 103

God's Loaf 104

The Genius of Snow 105

Gods Act in Acts 106

Epilogue: To What End This First and Final Life 107

Acknowledgments 109

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Luci Shaw crafts her poems in the way that she sees God’s creation is crafted—seamlessly and with enviable freshness. Always honest with herself and her readers, she writes movingly about poetry and prayer and growing older. She has written some of the best recent poems I have read about aging. Aging itself may not be marvelous, but Luci Shaw’s are marvelous poems. It is always a pleasure to spend time with her work.”
—Mark Jarman, author of The Heronry
 
“These are poems that find their beginnings in small, but particular details that catch what Hopkins once called the “inscape” of things, and then climb upward into the air, trusting words, arranged into poems, to come together to say something beyond what they can say. Throughout Luci Shaw’s Eye of the Beholder, there is the steadfast belief that there is an intimate connection between the writer, words, and a meaningful cosmos. She trusts that the universe can be “psalmed,” that words, especially when the writer is “radiant with assent,” can, and do, stitch a narrative together, a narrative that connects the beholder to what is beheld, that seeks and often finds the “pulse of the world,” and, in so doing, demonstrates how gratitude and praise are essential to happiness and contentment.”
—Robert Cording, poet and author of Walking with Ruskin and Only So Far
 
“Luci is like the great oak tree she describes, her poetry an abundance of acorns, and we the harvesters, squirreling away the treasures. One of the most generative poets of living memory, and this among her finest collections yet.”
—Sarah Arthur, author of A Light So Lovely: The Spiritual Legacy of Madeleine L’Engle
 
“In Eye of the Beholder, we are asked to behold the eye of the beholder, and in Luci Shaw, that eye is lovely to the last. “Who am I to psalm the universe?” she asks.  Yet there she stands and there she speaks, exchanging a “dialogue of glances” with “a squander of bright wind,” and then, finally, inviting us into “a small / house in the forest, with a stream running past, / and odd poems happening.””
—Paul J. Willis, author of Deer at Twilight: Poems from the North Cascades
 
“Eye of the Beholder is a collection that not only distills a lifetime of spiritual reflection and poetic craft but also launches with the author’s characteristic boldness into new, uncharted, liminal spaces. Like the lavender that Luci Shaw breathes in, her poetry “is itself a prayer, / a reaching, a receiving . . . breathing what God is telling me.” To which grateful readers can only say: “Thanks be to God.””
—Gregory Wolfe
 
 
 

Editorial Reviews

"Luci Shaw crafts her poems in the way that she sees God's creation is crafted--seamlessly and with enviable freshness. Always honest with herself and her readers, she writes movingly about poetry and prayer and growing older. She has written some of the best recent poems I have read about aging. Aging itself may not be marvelous, but Luci Shaw's are marvelous poems. It is always a pleasure to spend time with her work." --Mark Jarman, author of The Heronry

"These are poems that find their beginnings in small, but particular details that catch what Hopkins once called the 'inscape' of things, and then climb upward into the air, trusting words, arranged into poems, to come together to say something beyond what they can say. Throughout Luci Shaw's Eye of the Beholder, there is the steadfast belief that there is an intimate connection between the writer, words, and a meaningful cosmos. She trusts that the universe can be 'psalmed', that words, especially when the writer is 'radiant with assent', can, and do, stitch a narrative together, a narrative that connects the beholder to what is beheld, that seeks and often finds the 'pulse of the world, ' and, in so doing, demonstrates how gratitude and praise are essential to happiness and contentment." --Robert Cording, poet and author of Walking with Ruskin and Only So Far

"Luci is like the great oak tree she describes, her poetry an abundance of acorns, and we the harvesters, squirreling away the treasures. One of the most generative poets of living memory, and this among her finest collections yet." --Sarah Arthur, author of A Light So Lovely: The Spiritual Legacy of Madeleine L'Engle

"In Eye of the Beholder, we are asked to behold the eye of the beholder, and in Luci Shaw, that eye is lovely to the last. 'Who am I to psalm the universe?' she asks. Yet there she stands and there she speaks, exchanging a 'dialogue of glances' with 'a squander of bright wind, ' and then, finally, inviting us into 'a small / house in the forest, with a stream running past, / and odd poems happening.'" --Paul J. Willis, author of Deer at Twilight: Poems from the North Cascades

"Eye of the Beholder is a collection that not only distills a lifetime of spiritual reflection and poetic craft but also launches with the author's characteristic boldness into new, uncharted, liminal spaces. Like the lavender that Luci Shaw breathes in, her poetry 'is itself a prayer, / a reaching, a receiving...breathing what God is telling me.' To which grateful readers can only say: 'Thanks be to God.'" --Gregory Wolfe

"Eye of the Beholder awakens awareness of the extraordinary in the ordinary...Shaw's poems are reminders of daily divinity: the wonders we might see if only we look closely enough, long enough." --Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions

From the Publisher