Threading Light by Lorri Neilsen Glenn

Posted by Pearl Nonfiction Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry by Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Hagios Press (2011), 144 pages

Threading Light takes us down prairie roads, to the shores of the East Coast, into Asian market stalls, to the site of the Titanic graves and the kitchen tables of poets, to bring us back whole, refreshed in our understanding about loss, home, and the heart of poetry. In Neilsen Glenn’s lyrical language — language that George Elliott Clarke has called “bordering on the sacred”— we explore loss, grief, and the paths that lead us into writing and community. A blend of memoir, observation, wit, and lament, this book is a trickster, layering the philosophical, the spiritual, the literary, and the personal in ways that both challenge and comfort us, and leave us filled with hope.

Review

With the new year comes a quiet book that makes such a joyful noise it demands proclaiming: Threading Light by Prairie-born and Halifax-based poet and essayist Lorri Neilsen Glenn. A series of interconnected essays, poems and meditations on the subject of loss, Glenn’s work is a gem that’s impossible to put down. The writer’s wisdom is personal and scholarly, and founded on an awe-inspiring range of experiences and literary and spiritually-based sources.

Threading Light is a compelling distillation that moves from the heart-wrenching minutiae of her first loss as a very young woman – the loss of a fiancé – through the losses of both parents and the other accumulated sorrows that life brings. In lesser hands, such material might leave a reader feeling in a rut of sadness. But Glenn is never, ever sentimental, nor is she bookish; rather, she gathers the far corners of heart, mind and soul to explore the inner strength that guides the human spirit through grief. Hers is a dynamic, ever-broadening journey fueled by courage and stamina.

The movement of the pieces themselves mimics the very process of recovery, carrying us just swiftly enough from the particular to the universal with the expansiveness and candour that only arises from a generous spirit. Through her humble, courageous willingness to share her journey, Glenn’s search for some measure of peace in this world of suffering becomes the reader’s. ~ Carolbruneausblog.blogspot.com

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