The Shape of Emptiness - (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions) 3rd Edition by Regina O'Melveny (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p>The lyric poems that compose the three parts of <em>The Shape of Emptiness, </em>while each distinct, work in concert like the near invisible lines of an orb-weaver who tacks her continuous silk to the spokes of a web, beginning at the center, spiraling ever outward and then returning to center again. At the outset the poems explore the poet's core relationship with her father and his haunting absence. Then they touch upon the tragedy of suicide and her mother's troubled mind and heart. A hunger for connection runs through all the poems informed by the meditations and urgencies of the soul. In the last section of the book the poems draw upon the experiences that bind the poet to her husband, daughter and animal companions, in ways that open toward the greater fabric of nature of which we are all a part. Throughout the book, the delicate yet resilient strands between nature and human concerns are tested, explored, mourned where they have been torn, and celebrated where they hold, as revelatory and healing.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>With an eye that misses nothing, but reveres everything it finds without turning aside, Regina O'Melveny's newest book offers us a poetry that sings our all-too-palpable common mystery, where each thing given, shapes the emptiness of its beginning and its end. The naming of things as they truly are combines with the music in these poems to score what it feels like to walk this blessed earth as a wise and sometimes grieving companion who has the rare capacity to express in all circumstances what weds us to this world: the need and desire to love. - Peter Levitt</p><p>The intense, compelling poems in <em>The Shape of Emptiness </em>by Regina O'Melveny, carry the reader through a cycle of sorrow to joy, death to life. The lyrical journey begins as the poet faces her feelings of loss and abandonment when her father leaves the family and later dies, still estranged from his daughters. A separation which <em>dissolves all the history laid down in layers. </em>But the poet finds <em>improbable ways we all hold together.</em> For her, the natural world, as carefully and eloquently described by her as it would be by a scientist, becomes her refuge, becomes how she <em>holds together</em> through her father's death and her mother's mental illness. <em>All winter long the white roots/will spread and finger the way.</em> In the final section of the book, she finds her "Lantern of Air" in the creation of her own family, thus closing the circle in the joy of deep connection with her husband and her daughter. <em>My ear to his chest/clenched heart unclenches. </em>- Grace Grafton</p><p>The language of these poems, creeps so close to the natural world it gets entangled in it and soon we are also submerged in harsh truth and ultimate beauty. Here, in the <em>Shape of Emptiness</em>, life crackles and death comes alive. This book is true medicine. Drink deeply. Take it in. Yes. -- Deena Metzger</p><p> </p><br>
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