Out in the Open: Poems By Margaret Gibson

Book out in the open 2023

Margaret Gibson is the author of ten books of poems and one prose memoir A native of Virginia now a resident of Preston Connecticut she is a nationally and internationally recognized poet She has received numerous honors including the Connecticut Book Award and the Melville Kane Award and her collection The Vigil was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry. Poetry out in the open lyrics The lyric and meditative poems Margaret Gibson gives us in Out in the Open are works of contemplation and self inquiry In the long journey to be other than I am I have struggled and not got far she writes Sometimes the journey takes the poet literally out in the open the mountains the desert the fields the wood At other times the journey the search for vision and for truth begins a moment s notice in familiar domestic surroundings. Glen open the book some pages fall out Waiting for a grasp of permanent unity and clarity the poet turns the act of waiting into a discipline that enables the obstructions encountered desire fear ambition death disharmony to become teachers Meeting others we meet ourselves one poem says and whether the other is a love or someone dying a former Nazi pilot or a blind woman in Zagorsk there is self meeting and sometimes a deep recognition of something beyond and yet within self. Out in the open justgiving Echoes of Taoist Buddhist and Christian thinking haunt the mind in these poems although the vision arrived at in the last poems is syncretic an existential clarity in which struggle of wills is momentarily stilled. Out in the open antonym I lift the glassturn it slowly in the lightits whole body full of light: Out in the open 2019 At the core of what I amin that sacred space lightdoes its work as it willwithout my consentor blessing and better so: Open book with pages flying out The wind breathes lightinto our bones turning starsinto power we can touch implusewe can follow of tell teaching love for that is what we are Out in the Open Poems