Originally given an old copy of Thomas Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation by a friend’s mother, Lisa Gill began a series of fourteen-line poems which meticulously transcribe her own spiritual reckoning. As a response to Merton’s life and echoing the resonance she found in a world-view which included Christian contemplative life as well as Eastern religions and political work, she has fashioned a testament driven by a “hard-ass” sincerity capable of seeing her own distinct life. With a hunger that fallibility makes for receptivity and an eye which stays true to the bone, these poems lead toward the deep nature of immediate landscape and psyche with a capacity for perceiving their connectedness. A resolution exists here that poetry is indeed a calling—a journey of consequences where one keeps asking questions while pulled by a sense of Presence. Thomas Merton acts as inspiration as well as a friend for such dialogue, someone to hold her to scrutiny and not allow the glossing over of what’s real. In turns terrifying, funny, fierce, and transcendent, any one of these poems would reward a day’s meditation, yet it is impossible to stop reading them one after the other. Spare and lush at the same time, they work together like a tapestry of ever deepening revelations. Take nothing for granted, open the door, notice everything—know yourself, know poverty, doubt, ecstasy. For Lisa Gill every day is the first and last day of the world. Brilliant and uncompromising, this book will certainly appeal to anyone drawn to the sensibilities of Merton or the beauty of language at the service of inquiry.<br/><br/>A series of fourteen-line poems inspired by reading Thomas Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation.