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Poets and Poems: Luci Shaw and “An Incremental Life”

By Glynn Young 1 Comment

An Incremental Life Shaw
Luci Shaw takes stock of the personal, the poetic, and the sacred.

Luci Shaw has been writing poetry for more than half a century. She’s seen poetic fads, trends, and movements come and go. And she’s seen what endures. With that experience has come insight, an insight she distills into the 72 poems of her newest collection, An Incremental Life.

Shaw might be what I’d call “the poet of the quiet.” This isn’t the quietness of meekness or shyness. Hers is the quietness of the spirit, of experience lived and learned. This experience shines throughout the collection.

She begins by explaining (poetically) here title: “I live by increments, single / breaths of an ambient air, / marking off hours, days.” Life slows as understanding deepens; she edges each step “forward before venturing into the next.” This isn’t about living cautiously as it is living in recognition of the importance of each moment.

She organizes An Incremental Life into four parts, each containing about the same number of poems. “Increments” includes poems of personal experiences and places, from geography to the rather gruesome report of how her neuropathologist brother kept a human brain in a jar on his office shelf. “Elements” contains poems of flowers, birds, seasons, and other observations. “Testaments” is largely about poetry and its composition – how a poem begins, how it might suddenly happen while you’re cooking or eating, and the importance of even single words. And “Sacraments,” to no surprise, is about how Shaw sees the sacred in life, and she finds it in many unexpected places.

This poem is from the “Increments” section, and it’s a good example of how Shaw finds beauty and meaning in the most mundane of activities, like the donation of a cardigan.

Donation: Hand-Knit Cardigan

An Incremental Life Shaw coverHere, take it, it is all I have to offer,
though it is unfinished, unfinishing,
doubtful that it will ever be finished.
My fingers clumsy with age and arthritis,
the knitted seams wait for joining, as if
the unfinished sleeve is its own end-of-
life destiny, its evidence of mortality’s
scourge. As old memory’s loosening skein
attempts to mend it, to sew the seams,
to pull together what remains of an old
skill, though the knitting itself remains
uneven, ragged, seams unsewn, yarn
faded, coffee-stained, the garment gaping
through its own sagging armholes.
A reject, though from behind the fabric
a scrape of light shines through, still.
Yes, Thank you. Thank you. That is all.

Luci Shaw

Luci Shaw

Shaw, a native of England, has lived in Canada, Australia, and the United States. Since 1988, she’s been writer-in-residence at Regents College in Vancouver, British Columbia. She has published 15 poetry collections and several nonfiction books, including three co-authored with Madeleine L’Engle. She has also edited three poetry anthologies and served as editor of Radix Magazine. She graduated with high honors from Wheaton College in Illinois.

I’ve been reading Shaw’s poetry for almost 15 years, since finding a copy of her 2010 collection Harvesting Fog in a small retreat center book shop in the Texas hill country. And I can’t reading any of her poetry now without thinking of that landscape – stark, spare, often shockingly beautiful, with a crystal blue river running through it like a flowing oasis. That’s Shaw’s poetry, and that’s the experience of reading An Incremental Life.

Related:

Luci Shaw and Reversing Entropy.

Photo by M’s photography, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.

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Glynn Young
Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of the Civil War romance Brookhaven, as well as Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
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Comments

  1. Bethany R. says

    April 4, 2025 at 1:37 pm

    “Life slows as understanding deepens . . . This isn’t about living cautiously as it is living in recognition of the importance of each moment.”

    Hm, yes, like settling into each moment and seeing it more fully. Thanks for sharing this review and featured poem. Loved this part –

    “A reject, though from behind the fabric
    a scrape of light shines through, still.”

    Reply

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