What the Light Was Like: Poems [Paperback]

Luci Shaw (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 25, 2006

"This is what a sacramental poetry sounds like," says fellow poet Paul Mariani of Luci Shaw's new collection, What the Light Was Like. Shaw holds up both world and words to the light, revealing to us what has been there all along and teaching us how to see it for ourselves--with honesty, precision and patience.

Tenting, Burr Trail, Long Canyon, Escalante
Even when I close my eyes, even later in
the tent, dreaming, I see banks and rivers running red.
My blood has drunk color from the stones as if
it were the meal I needed. I am ready to eat
any beauty--these vistas of stars, storms.
The mesas and vermillion cliffs. The light they magnify
into the canyon. The echoes, the distances.
The rocks carved with ancient knowledge.

But after vast valleys I am so ready for this
low notch in the gorge, the intimate cottonwoods
lifting their leafy skirts and blowing their small
soft kisses into my tent on the wastland's
stringy breath. The spaces between the gusts are rich
with silence. I am ready to stay in this one place, sleep,
dream, breathe the grace of wind and earth that is
never too much, and more than I will ever need.

In this parchment land, the scribble
and blot of junipers and sagebrush--each crouched
separate, rooted in its own desert space--
spreads low to the sand, holding it down
the way the tent pegs anchor my tent, keep it
from blowing away. The way I want my words
to hold, growing maybe an inch a year,
grateful for the least glisten of dew.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"This is what a sacramental poetry sounds like," says fellow poet Paul Mariani of Luci Shaw's new collection, What the Light Was Like. Shaw holds up both world and words to the light, revealing to us what has been there all along and teaching us how to see it for ourselves--with honesty, precision and patience.

"When William Stafford died, I wondered who there was to carry on in his spirit--humane, attentive, droll, faithful, one for whom writing poetry was as natural as breathing. And, reading What the Light Was Like, I see it has been Luci Shaw all along.
Mark Jarman, author of To the Green Man and Body and Soul: Essays on Poetry

"This is what a sacramental poetry sounds like. In What the Light Was Like, Luci Shaw holds up the world and words to the light, and the light in turn gathers into a marvelous translucency to reveal what is there if only we will take the time and effort to rinse our eyes and look. This is her strongest book of poems yet, page after page gifting us with one authentic and felicitous revelation after another. Read her. She just might change the way you see what's there before you."
Paul Mariani, author of Thirty Days and Deaths & Transfigurations: Poems

"I have been reading Luci Shaw's books of poems for thirty-five years or so, each book a reliable companion in exegeting the word and presence of God even as I live it. Here's the latest: I turn a page and see a piece of creation that I had seen but not seen, recognize a soul's syllable that I had heard but not heard--resurrection poems."
Eugene H. Peterson, translator of The Message

"Luci Shaw's poems are as fresh as today's news and as timeless as the mountains and waters of her Pacific Northwest. This collection promises and delivers light, and much more: heart, shadow, nuance, the grace of a world keenly observed and shared."
Michael Wilt, editor, NimbleSpirit.com

"In Luci Shaw's poems, which manage the almost impossible feat of being sacerdotal without being sanctimonious, God reveals himself through nature: 'In the clasp of two/ saber-shaped leaves heaven looked like/ the gaze of God peering through the eye of a needle'--and often through the landscape of the poet's beloved Pacific Northwest. But the love is not held in a safe loop between the God of nature and the poet; it is directed in turn toward others. 'Remember,' the poet tells us, 'love is made for something dire.'"
Andrew Hudgins, author of Ecstatic in the Poison and Babylon in a Jar

"Lovely, original, deeply felt work from one of America's most thoughtful spiritual poets. Luci Shaw once again startles us awake with her great talent and profound insights."
Philip Zaleski, editor, The Best American Spiritual Writing series

About the Author

Luci Shaw is a poet, essayist, teacher and retreat leader. Author of a number of nonfiction books and eight volumes of poetry, she serves as Writer in Residence at Regent College (Vancouver, British Columbia). Her poems have appeared in several anthologies and in publications such as Books & Culture, The Christian Century, Crux, Image, Radix, Rock & Sling, Nimble Spirit and Weavings.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 79 pages
• Publisher: WordFarm (August 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0974342793
• ISBN-13: 978-0974342795
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #952,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Luci Shaw is a poet, essayist, teacher and retreat leader. Born in England in 1928, she has lived in Australia and Canada and (since 1950) in the United States.

She is the author of a number of nonfiction books, including God in the Dark and Water My Soul. Her first book of poetry, Listen to the Green, was publishd in 1971. It was followed by several others, including Polishing the Petoskey Stone, Writing the River, The Angles of Light and, most recently, Accompanied by Angels (published by Eerdmans in July 2006),What the Light Was Like (published by WordFarm in Setpember 2006, Breath for the Bones (published by Thomas Nelson in 2007)and Harvesting Fog (published by Pinyon Press in 2010).

Her poems have appeared in publications such as Books & Culture, The Christian Century, Crux, Image, Radix, Rock & Sling, Relief, Ruminate, The Southern Review, Nimble Spirit and Weavings. Musical settings for several of her poems have been composed by Knut Nystedt, Alice Parker, Frederick Frahm, Roland Fudge and Allen Cline. Many of her poems have also been anthologized.

Currently, Shaw serves as Writer in Residence at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, while based in Bellingham, Washington, with her husband, John Hoyte. She is on the board of trustees of Image, a journal of art, faith and mystery. She also travels widely to speak and teach on topics such as poetry, journaling and the Christian imagination. Her website (www.lucishaw.com) reflects some of her many other interests--wilderness camping, sailing, gardening and nature photography.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dazzle and singular wit, June 17, 2006

By 

Laurie Klein "writer, reader, consulting editor" (Deer Park, WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: What the Light Was Like: Poems (Paperback)

Dazzle and singular wit meet memory in Luci Shaw's latest volume of poems, What the Light Was Like. Of her seven collections, this is my favorite: passion hums beneath restraint, scenes linger, meaning unfurls.

The poems are divided into four sections -- Outside, Inside, Downside, Upside -- and each season and landscape somehow becomes our landscape, our time. Enchanted, we enter in: "My whole body an ear, an eye."

There's humor too, in an outhouse tale, in the irresistible steps to mimicking crickets: "... collect a spoon's worth of saliva / on your flattened tongue, and ..." I dutifully followed all the directions. They work.

There is also sobering insight here: "Remember, / love is made for something dire." Throughout the book as well as her life, Shaw examines and celebrates nature even as nature, in turn, ponders her. Perhaps her line about Botticelli's Madonna best captures the voice behind these luminous poems: "... singing as if she had swallowed a linnet--".

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "maybe an inch a year", October 11, 2009

By 

Ellen G. Olinger (Wisconsin, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: What the Light Was Like: Poems (Paperback)

There is a tree turning gold once again outside my window, here in Wisconsin. I have been watching it for years, including the year of my mother's final illness and the early years of grief. Today the sun is flowing through the golden leaves, and I am not thinking about loss. My spirits are uplifted as I ponder the Light. I think time spent this week rereading WHAT THE LIGHT WAS LIKE, by Luci Shaw, is why this familiar scene is transformed.

This book is dedicated to Margaret Smith, "herself a gifted poet and kindred spirit" (p.13). The two poets exchanged cards from a variety of places. In the Foreward--worthy of rereading too--Shaw says, "'What the light was like' became our antiphonal theme. Back and forth the cards came and went for years. Some of our word pictures ended up in poems. Images are like that; they tend to attach themselves to nouns and verbs and adjectives" (p. 13).

Shaw, who was born in 1928, says in the first poem that she wants her "...words/to hold, growing maybe an inch a year,/grateful for the least glisten of dew" (p. 17). The title of this poem is "Tenting, Burr Trail, Long Canyon, Escalante." There is beauty, honesty, courage, and theology in the variety of poems which follow.

WHAT THE LIGHT WAS LIKE was published by WordFarm (copyright 2006 by Luci Shaw). I appreciate how each poem has plenty of space around it. For example, "Getting on Board" fills Page 24 and concludes with two lines on Page 25. The next poem begins on Page 26. This allows the reader space to reflect, or even to put the book down and look out the window at the light shining in her own yard.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You will have to think. This isn't high school poetry., May 12, 2007

By 

C. A. Bridges "Don't Waste Your Life" (Moses Lake, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: What the Light Was Like: Poems (Paperback)

Luci Shaw is a word person. This is human emotion, theology, reality, all wrapped in one package, written by a masterful writer.