Customer Reviews

Firekeeper (Trade)

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As a general rule, I dislike reading poetry. However, someone recommended this book to me, and reading it has changed not only my view of poetry but how I think in the world. Crafted with care, the poems found in this volume offer an intimate view of nature, life, and a basics that could be termed humanity. Science and nature are blended with a profound yet simple eloquence in poetry that makes the English language dance.As a general rule, I dislike reading poetry. However, someone recommended this book to me, and reading it has changed not only my view of poetry but how I think in the world. Crafted with care, the poems found in this volume offer an intimate view of nature, life, and something basic that could be termed humanity. Science and nature are blended with a profound yet simple eloquence in poetry that makes the English language dance.

"Someone said my real name to me
last night...And I rose easily to my name
as if over the rim of earth at dawn..."

-- from "The Power of Sun", Pattiann Rogers (in "Firekeeper" 1994)

If you need poems like the one above, you need Pattiann Rogers. If you need the rest of this poem, you need "Firekeeper" -- the purple, 1994 edition.

Pattiann Rogers is a stunning poet, one whom I was delighted to hear in person at Chautauqua Institute, New York. When invited to bring poems to share on retreat, I was equally delighted to find a second-hand copy of her "Firekeeper" at a bookstore outside Ithaca. Oddly, though, the selections in the older, purple-covered edition I picked up there and the newer, red one I had left at home do not match up entirely. Thus you will find her exquisite "The Power of Sun" in the former, but not in the latter.

Also among the missing in the "expanded", 2005 edition (from the "Old Spiral of Conception" poems, themselves new to the 1994 "Firekeeper") are "The Need to Adore", "God Alone", and "Another Little God". Firekeeper II is thus a survey of her wider compass over time; Firekeeper I (or her later, collected "Song of the World Becoming") is required for a full reading of the "Old Spiral of Conception" poems. Also of note: in "The Dream of the Marsh Wren: Writing As Reciprocal Creation", Rogers offers insight into her creative process.

Pattiann rogers writes with the kind of grace that words were invented for. Her poems are often funny, sometimes sad, and always thought-provoking. I highly recommend her book for both those who love poems and those who usually do not. Wonderful book...