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    Into the Open: Poems New and Selected
    Into the Open: Poems New and Selected
    Into the Open: Poems New and Selected
    Ebook280 pages1 hour

    Into the Open: Poems New and Selected

    By Susan McCaslin

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    About this ebook

    Into the Open: Poems New and Selected is both a compendium and compression of the best and most representative of Susan McCaslin’s poetry over nearly five decades. In addition, it showcases new work. The explorations of Into the Open begin with McCaslin’s intense early interest in mystical Christianity, but expand to include global wisdom traditions from cultures east and west. Her work does not advocate for a particular system of belief, but exemplifies the open-ended probings of an inquiring mind. A selection of her new work in a powerful sequence called Lineage takes up some of her earlier themes but pushes them into new arenas, addressing questions of how to age into elder-dom; how to take one’s place with humility and gratitude in a world fraught with pain and loss; how to remain open to wonder. In the words of her editor Katerina Fretwell, “Selecting from Susan McCaslin's eighteen-book oeuvre Into the Open has been a pilgrimage through her poetic and spiritual evolution. Her visionary poetscapes conjure William Blake, Thomas Merton, Greco-Roman mythology, angels, the Canadian mystic Olga Park, John of Patmos, Teresa of Avila, Henry Vaughan, Lao Tzu, Han Shan, Mary Magdalene and other unitive mystics of many cultures, faiths and eras. Such diversity suggests the range and reach of McCaslin's work. Here is a poet at the peak of her powers.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInanna Poetry and Fiction Series
    Release dateSep 15, 2017
    ISBN9781771334686
    Into the Open: Poems New and Selected
    Author

    Susan McCaslin

    Susan McCaslin is an award-winning Canadian poet and Faculty Emerita of Douglas College in Westminster, BC where she taught English and Creative Writing for twenty-three years. She is the author of eleven volumes of poetry, including her most recent, The Disarmed Heart (May 2014). Her previous volume of poetry, Demeter Goes Skydiving (2012) was short-listed for the BC Book Prize (Dorothy Livesay Award) and the first-place winner of the Alberta Book Publishing Award (Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award) in 2012. Susan has published a volume of essays, Arousing the Spirit: Provocative Writings (2011) and edited two anthologies on poetry and spiritual practice. In addition, she is on the editorial board of Event: the Douglas College Review and is an editorial assistant for The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (Harvard Divinity School). Susan is nourished by wilderness and by the world’s global mystics and contemplatives of various spiritual traditions. Freed to be a full-time writer since retiring from teaching, she lives in Fort Langley, British Columbia with her husband. Recently, she initiated the Han Shan Poetry Project as part of a successful campaign to protect an endangered rainforest along the Fraser River in British Columbia.

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