Looking for Light

25 words
Looking for Light ponders how to create beauty and meaning in our troubled world, considering the arts, spirituality, even particle physics, and life's ultimate transformation.

150 words
In a deeply troubled world, how is it possible to Make it beautiful, as her Muse demands, Susan Ioannou asks in her fourth major poetry collection, Looking for Light. In the attempt, she follows the artistic imagination's travels as far as Italy's Bagni di Lucca, fantasizes about a poetry class romance, feels the intimacy between sculptor and subject, and swirls with a dancer's passion. Part 2, Beyond Knowing, turns inward, blending spirituality, nature, and the paradoxes of particle physics to puzzle about the experience of God and the mysterious forces that brought us into being and invisibly sustain us, body and soul. Part 3, Passing Seventy, explores transformation, both physical and emotional, as the final years of life approach. Not only do ageing's challenges of failing health and family loss reshape our familiar perspective on the present, they drive a larger vision of what may come after the inevitable happens.