Where the Sky Opens
A Partial Cosmography
LAURIE KLEIN
WHERE THE SKY OPENS
A Partial Cosmography
The Poiema Poetry Series
Copyright © 2015 Laurie Klein. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
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ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-3090-2
EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-3091-9
Cataloging-in-Publication data:
Laurie Klein.
Where the sky opens : a partial cosmography / Laurie Klein.
xiv + 82 p.; 23 cm
The Poiema Poetry Series
ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-3090-2
1. American Poetry—21st Century I. Title II. Series
PS3746.K312 2014
Manufactured in the USA.
In her debut collection Where the Sky Opens: A Partial Cosmography, Klein invites us, her “journey mates,” to encounter a world more beautiful, complex and fragile than we often expect at the beginning of our faith histories. From the natural wonder of toads and lichens and mountain trails to the “wild, savory, perilous, graced” marriage relationship, these poems illuminate a sensitivity to life’s lights and shadows through some of the most lush and visually intricate language I’ve read in years. Klein does not only write about, but through the loss of faith—and the love that redeems it—in “the kingdom emerging in guises we never knew.”
—Tania Runyan, author of Second Sky
What sinewy, mature poems these are, dynamic and packed with color! Laurie Klein’s lines zero in on her life’s crucial details that then enlarge, resonate and fill the frame of the reader’s imagination. If asked, I’d say, “Dig in. Enjoy. This poet knows her way through words to things too vital to ignore.”
—Luci Shaw, Writer in Residence, Regent College, author of Scape and Adventure of Ascent
In Where the Sky Opens, Laurie Klein poses an implicit question of location. As it turns out, that sky opens in the reader’s heart, crossed by flights of love and loss in poems that sing like red-winged blackbirds on the edge of a northern marsh. With a deftness of image and patience of faith, the poet reminds us to “let grief be, with every breath, a readied womb.”
—Paul J. Willis, author of Say This Prayer into the Past
Laurie Klein’s first collection of poems is a glorious hymn of praise, inviting us into intimacy with things both known and unknown, earthy and sublime. Her language lifts you from the page into a poetic reverie and deeper reverence for life.
—Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, author of The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom
I cannot remember the last time I read a poet with such burly thrumming love-addled music—dense and real and salty and singing, adamant and muscular and sharp—read any three of these poems and you will be more awake, which is what the best poetry is for. This book is that kind of poetry.
—Brian Doyle, author of Mink River
The Poiema Poetry Series
Poems are windows into worlds; windows into beauty, goodness, and truth; windows into understandings that won’t twist themselves into tidy dogmatic statements; windows into experiences. We can do more than merely peer into such windows; with a little effort we can fling open the casements, and leap over the sills into the heart of these worlds. We are also led into familiar places of hurt, confusion, and disappointment, but we arrive in the poet’s company. Poetry is a partnership between poet and reader, seeking together to gain something of value—to get at something important.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship . . .” poiema in Greek—the thing that has been made, the masterpiece, the poem. The Poiema Poetry Series presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously, and demonstrate in whose image we have been made through their creativity and craftsmanship.
These poets are recent participants in the ancient tradition of David, Asaph, Isaiah, and John the Revelator. The thread can be followed through the centuries—through the diverse poetic visions of Dante, Bernard of Clairvaux, Donne, Herbert, Milton, Hopkins, Eliot, R. S. Thomas, and Denise Levertov—down to the poet whose work is in your hand. With the selection of this volume you are entering this enduring tradition, and as a reader contributing to it.
—D.S. Martin
Series Editor
For Will,
vagabond, dreamer, my heart’s address
And for journey mates everywhere:
those who have gone on before,
and those still en route, detoured, stranded, or lost
. . . I will show them my wonders.
Micah 7:15
Preface
Cosmography: “A general description of the world or of the universe” (Merriam-Webster).
Picture the bird’s eye view with an occasional zoom. Flight paths fuel, or skew, our sight lines: My eyes, your eyes, take in a wild and partial cosmography.
The poems in Where the Sky Opens speak for, and about, journey mates crossing peculiar terrain. You’ll find fellow travelers here, those who have gone on before, and those now en route, or detoured. Stranded. Lost. A partner jettisons lifelong faith; the pair redefines union.
How does truth unfold as the shared spiritual core of a relationship shatters?
Alternately exploring Nature or cocooning at home, the characters test the muscle of covenant, celebrate the erratic funny bone, and stretch the knotty sinews of grace.
Some days are limbo; others are matchless, breathtaking, out on a limb.
With love for this world and its Maker, and with deepening respect for seasons and crucial migrations—physical, relational, spiritual—I offer these poems as prayers for ever-expanding mercy, courage, and fidelity.
Laurie Klein
June 1, 2015
How to Live Like a Backyard Psalmist
Wear shoes with soles like meringue
and pale blue stitching so that
every day you feel ten years old.
Befriend what crawls.
Drink rain, hatless, laughing.
Sit on your heels before anything plush
or vaguely kinetic:
hazel-green kneelers of moss
waving their little parcels
of spores, on hair-trigger stems.
Hushed as St. Kevin cradling the egg,
new-laid, in an upturned palm,
tiptoe past a red-winged blackbird’s nest.
Ponder