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The Geography of the Heart:
Poetic Paths for the Journey Inward
Selections and Text by Charlene A. Sexton
Poetry and Spirituality Society, 2001, unpaginated. Limited edition.
I have carried in my wallet for twenty-five years an envelope upon which I copied e. e. cummings’ “i thank you god for most this amazing day” after discovering the poem in a book in my college library. And for several years, before personal computers, I typed up my favorite poems and posted them on my kitchen cabinets to occupy my mind while waiting for water to boil or rice to cook. More recently I customized my laptop’s screen saver so that several times a day I can read these favorite lines from Thomas Merton’s long poem Cables to the Ace: “I think poetry must / I think it must / stay open all night / in beautiful cellars”.
Poetry can be a steady companion and provide countless signposts on the spiritual journey. In producing The Geography of the Heart, Charlene A. Sexton has honored that companion by selecting a generous handful of exquisite poems, adding her own reflections on poetry and the spiritual journey, and collaborating with designer Regula Russelle, who printed and bound, by hand, fifty copies of a book that is deeply satisfying to hold, to read, and to reflect upon.
Here are poems spanning the centuries from the tenth to the twentieth, offered in sections that provide insight into the dynamics of the spiritual path: “From Loneliness to Solitude”; “From Hostility to Hospitality”; “From Illusion to Prayer.” Poets from Hafiz to Shikibu to Levertov to Kenyon illumine matters of God’s presence and spiritual yearning, and Russelle’s small illustrations throughout the book iconically underline the paths that Sexton’s vision helps the reader to follow.
In conception and execution The Geography of the Heart is book that far exceeds the potential of many popular, mass produced spiritual resources, and it takes poetry to a place that transcends its identity as, simply, literature. The book itself inspires the kind of reverence that might accompany one’s encounter with a Latin breviary or a Shakespeare folio, but also generates desire for progress on the spiritual path. It is a book to hold and treasure, but once it is put (safely) away the reader goes forth changed and changing, ready for deeper engagement with the world, on all levels.
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The Geography of the Heart includes work by Hafiz, Pablo Neruda, Edith Soedergran, Langston Hughes, William Stafford, Rainer Maria Rilke, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Denise Levertov, Marge Piercy, Wendell Berry, Izumi Shikibu, Jane Kenyon, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Winifred Rawlins. Fifty copies were handprinted and handbound by Regula Russelle at the Cedar Fence Press in St. Paul Minnesota. The book is available for $83.00, postpaid, exclusively from:
Poetry and Spirituality Society
P.O. Box 259604
Madison, Wisconsin 53725
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