Lifting the Stone
Author: Susan McCaslin
This is the finest collection
yet by a poet with a growing reputation for writing with
passionate candor and exquisite finesse on matters of faith
and spirituality in the tradition of Herbert, Hopkins, and
Avison.
Susan McCaslin hefts the everyday
into the spiritual realm and interweaves this gossamer longing
with the troubled, lovely tug of the quotidian. ... McCaslin
honours the relentless gaps in communication that often
lead to transcendent forms of epiphany. Voicing the tender
consciousness of St. Francis and the raucous compassion
of Merton, McCaslin's lingual spirit encompasses both "the
night rotations of animals" and "the horror that
is our daily bread." Cradling the memory of parents,
scripture, awe and fear, Lifting the
Stone performs a delicate and difficult task of release.
~ Catherine Owen
With an equal measure of grace
and grit, she sings from the still centre of being human
and conscious on a glorious, defiled, everyday earth of
love and pollution, dogs, moths and God.
~ John Terpstra
In poems like the delicate
sequence "Liturgy of Creatures," Susan McCaslin
welcomes you to her spiritual world, one that is compassionate
and contemplative, and filled with "dancing highwires
of verse."
~ Sandy Shreve
