So Ecstasy Can Find You

In her third collection of poems, novelist Elizabeth Cunningham leads us on an intimate journey into forest and mountain, garden and dream, along a hidden stream bed and beside a friend's deathbed. She also explores poetic form, drawing inspiration from ghazal, haiku, tanka, and song lyric. Eye and ear are equally important to Cunningham; her images are rich, her rhythms, sure. By turns wry and tender, awed and amused, the collection displays the emotional range of a writer whose questions have led her on a quest, whether it is following blue trail markers along a cliff or confronting her own aging and death. These poems are grounded (literally and figuratively) in Cunningham's ecstatic connection with the earth in all its strength, fragility and mystery.