Bones and Breath - Softcover

Zwald, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1950744191 ISBN 13: 9781950744190

Publisher: Michigan Writers Cooperative Press, 2024

Synopsis

Ruth Zwald's collection of poems, Bones and Breath, takes us on a spiritual journey that begins with the death of her father and concludes with what she believes it will be like "when it is my turn to go." In this collection are stories of family, and stories about stories. "It happened like this," she tells us as she relates the death of both her parents, yet she ends the poem with "Stories wait to be told." She asks in the first poem, "make me a keeper of bones," and in one of the final poems we find her "piecing together the past/stitching my ancestors' stories." Bones and stories, stories and bones. In this collection they seem to be interchangeable. As the title and sections indicate, we move from bones and grief into breath, from "the stories told in the dark nights" to the time and place where "we begin singing new ones." In "the long grasses of summer," Zwald speaks of her ancestors, men and women "preserving what could be preserved/which they know is very little for not very long." She joins her ancestors with this collection of poems, preserving their bones and stories through poetry.

• Anita Skeen, author of The Unauthorized Audubon and Never the Whole Story

About this title

About the Author

Words have always been a focus in Ruth Zwald's life. From high school forensics to a spoken word choral group in college, to her professional life as pastor and social worker --words have been honored. When an astrologer told Ruth several years ago she had no "earth" in her birth sign, she set about to find ways to ground. Ruth plants gardens and helps raise sheep and chickens on her farm in West Michigan. She became a student of indigenous spirituality and now never misses a solstice or equinox turning. Ruth also began digging up words like she digs potatoes - unearthing thoughts and reconnecting to the creative and healing use of language. You can find out more about Ruth Zwald on her website: www.spiritlinkservices.com.

Edition details

• Publisher: Michigan Writers Cooperative Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1950744191
• ISBN 13: 9781950744190
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 52