Rob Hadfield Bending Reeds

Annotation

The poems in this book reflect themes that involve the processes of bending with the wind, of living in the flow of things, of human connection and resilience, of being and becoming in the earthiness of things as they are, without avoidance. It is also about meaning and living with grace given, about the sources of this within spirituality as a present-centered experience of self-transcendence, but without glossiness or presumption. Spirituality involves pain and desolation, as well as insight, integration, strengthening and comfort. It emerges in the rawness of things like loss, grief, failure, fragility and the felt exile from, as well as presence of, inner divine nurturance. Some poems also express joy and pleasure, connection to nature, to seasonal changes in the high country of New England, and a sense of the ironic and satirical. Some explore the deeply personal, some the relational and communal, some the collective and historical. Still others reflect on the nature of life and change. In one or two an ecological mysticism is expressed, in keeping with an holistic spirituality; conceptual ways of knowing are inadequate for describing the interconnected fullness of lived experience.