The Generosity

“Luci Shaw’s poems have always been welcome company, but how much more so in anxious times. There is a substantial comfort in her instinct for pleasure—in language, creation, people, habits. Her poems reveal a mind marked by humor, curiosity, good nature, and, well, generosity. Each poem in this new book is a short lesson in noticing the world attentively, and a reminder to slow down and find the wonder, not just in the natural world, but in the less lovely things that make up our ordinary lives and duties. Time spent with Luci is time redeemed.” —Mary Kenagy Mitchell, Executive Editor, Image
 
“Ah, The Generosity! Such an apt title for anything having to do with Luci Shaw and her vocation as a woman of letters, a woman of compassionate engagement with persons, places, and things. A profound generosity of attention, of vision, and of connection with other souls is what is most apparent in these epistles of the heart. Most moving to me—one of her thousands of longtime fans—is her candid appraisal of the human point of view, and her diligent ?????, or watchfulness, assists our own seeing, our own slow trek to what may yet await us, after the in-between.” —Scott Cairns, author of Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems and Anaphora
 
“A new book by Luci Shaw is a reason for rejoicing! She gives us a generous collection of lyric poems, reminiscent of Dylan Thomas, with lines such as ‘The air is full of green pilgrims who / walk together in this God light.’”
—Barbara Crooker, author of The Book of Kells and Some Glad Morning
 
“These poems illuminate how in poetry, as in faith, ‘ripeness is all.’ With Wordsworth, Luci is celebrated for being a gifted landscape poet, rich in imagery, but animals too, great and small (beetles, cricket, voles, bears, and whales) play a major role in her poetics of creation. God is likened to a great bear who leaves paw tracks for us to follow. In their deep faith and vibrant colors and designs, the poems in The Generosity might be considered Luci’s Book of Kells.” —Philip C. Kolin, author of Reaching Forever: Poems and Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus), University of Southern Mississippi