Jill Pelaez Baumgaertner

From Shade to Shine: New Poems Jill Pelaez Baumgaertner

This collection of poems begins in the growing darkness of November, stretches through Advent and the seasons leading to Easter and to Pentecost, and ends in the budding light of the Scottish Orkney Islands, where the canonical hours measure time over centuries and where God broods over an austere and beautiful landscape. The measurement of time passing and returning, year after year, in the rhythms of the seasons and of the liturgical year, create the pace and the song. But in the biblical voices of Magdalene, Mary, Abel, and Eve, and in the grim historical and political realities of war and suffering, one also hears lament and finds the poet's clear-eyed gaze straight into life's challenges. Memory is at work here, too, in personal reminiscences and in theological reflection. As one philosopher has said, "All truth is God's truth."