
From the pen of beloved poet Luci Shaw comes a new collection that celebrates inspired creativity as an antidote to chaos. The poet's own words best describe the heart of this pinnacle collection of new work by beloved writer Luci A measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system, its lack of order or predictability, resulting in a gradual decline into disorder. Our universe, and the systems within it, constantly shift from their created states of order towards disorder, or chaos. The second law of thermodynamics asserts that entropy, or disorder, always increases with time. Creative human activities such as art, architecture, music, story or film are human efforts to halt and reverse this loss of meaning. Thus, smaller systems, like individual poems, become highly ordered as they receive energy from outside themselves, from the poet. They reverse entropy because they are moving from a state of disorder (all the random ideas, words and phrases available to the writer) into an orderly form designed by the writer to create meaningful images and concepts in the reader's mind (which is where the word "imag-ination" comes from.) This transfer of images, concepts and ideas into the mind of a reader is the task of poetry and the calling of the poet. Just as a composer of music gathers rhythms, notes, melodies, or harmony, organizing them into fugues or sonatas or concertos, so poets work and write to discover ways of arranging their responses to the world in words that introduce meaning and beauty in the mind of the reader. Which is what I've been trying to do for most of my life.
Author

Luci Shaw is a poet, essayist, teacher and retreat leader. Born in England in 1928, she has lived in Australia and Canada and (since 1950) in the United States. She is the author of a number of nonfiction books, including God in the Dark and Water My Soul. Her first book of poetry, Listen to the Green, was published in 1971. It was followed by several others, including Polishing the Petosky Stone, Writing the River, The Angles of Light and, most recently, Accompanied by Angels and What the Light Was Like. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Books & Culture, The Christian Century, Crux, Image, Radix, Rock & Sling, Nimble Spirit and Weavings. Musical settings for several of her poems have been composed by Knut Nystedt, Alice Parker, Frederick Frahm and Allen Cline. Many of her poems have also been anthologized. Currently, Shaw serves as Writer in Residence at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, while based in Bellingham, Washington, with her husband, John Hoyte. She also travels widely to speak and teach on topics such as poetry, journaling and the Christian imagination. Her website reflects some of her many other interests—wilderness camping, sailing, gardening and nature photography. [From Amazon's Luci Shaw page]