Changing Light: The Eternal Cycle of Night and Day

by J. Ruth Gendler (Editor)

In this moving and provocative anthology, the bestselling author of The Book of Qualities presents poems, myths, and prayers celebrating the fundamental cycle of life--night into day, sun and moon, and dark into light. Embellished with Gendler's own evocative and brilliantly vivid art.

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Charissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was given to me by my writing mentor and friend, Thomas Centolella. During the period of time he gifted it to me I was going through probably the most difficult period of my adult life, my divorce and custody trial. The poems collected here were some of the most sustaining pieces I have read in my long love affair with poetry. I love how the structure of the collection is a movement from dusk into night, dawn into day, day into dusk again. It is one of the most elegant and archetypal arrangements of poems I have come across. Here is one that he marked for me, and has remained one of my favorite fragments of all time:

If each day falls
inside each night,
there exists a well
where clarity is imprisoned.

We need to sit on the rim
of the well of darkness
and fish for fallen light
with patience.

~ Pablo Neruda
Translated from the Spanish by William O'Daly

and from Mary Oliver:

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted -

Beautiful.

[Kendalyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." - Rumi

What a brilliantly compiled book that spans many eras and cultures which gives weight to the sense of the "Eternal" in the title. The light and its cycles unite all people, all ages, spans all climes, and is rooted deeply in the heart of every person who has had the pleasure to witness even one dawning day and the light that floods it.