About the Book
This astonishing new collection from poet Bethany Lee weaves the thread of her keen attention around life's joys and sorrows, draws them tightly together and offers them into our hands. With unflinching courage she extracts beauty from her journeys as seafarer and grief-tender, makes her way into the present moment, and invites us to come along.
The Breath Between offers good company for hard days, water for the thirsty spirit, and a summons to inhabit your own life more fully. You will not regret the time you spend in the chapel of these words.
About the Author :
Bethany Lee lives and writes in Lafayette, Oregon, drawing inspiration from her travels by sea and her work as hospice harpist and accompanist. She makes a home at the edge of the woods with her husband, Bryan, and her two young adult daughters.
Review :
"I love these poems. Weaving together the textures of light and the rhythms of breath, seeing the wonder in ordinary everyday surroundings, touching the mysteries of night and death and grief, Bethany Lee has put into words some of the deepest human experience, and given it back to us clothed in joy and hope. Her work sings like a bird."
--Penelope Wilcock, author of The Clear Light of Day
"Let this book into your life, and it will be a generous visitor, giving you blessings and consolations, musical thoughts, and glances of spirit light to play across your troubles and your treasures. In the ebb and flow of wellbeing that is a given for us all, these poems will nudge you back to center, to the true point of beginning."
--Kim Stafford, author of Wild Honey, Tough Salt
"Bethany Lee's The Breath Between is an invitation to a moment-by- moment unfolding of each day. It's a quiet celebration of the elusive happenings, made worthy of our attention through a voice endearing and wise."
--Emily Grosvenor, editor of Oregon Home magazine
"Mystical and joyful, Lee delivers clean lines of poetry with a frank and open heart. Her window to the natural world is one of whimsy and deep connection. She writes of human relationships thoughtfully and with unadorned love. There is magic in this collection."
--Jennifer Springsteen, co-founder of PDX Writers
"Memorization is not my strong-suit, but this collection contains so many gems I want to hold forever (including one in particular that may be my favorite poem of all time), that it begged me to commit these to memory. Packed with lines of breathtaking beauty, it left me rapturous and winded."
--Benjamin Gorman, author of Don't Read This Book and The Sum of Our Gods
"The Breath Between is magic, pure and simple. Bethany Lee holds your hand in the suspended and infinite space between the breaths. She beckons you to pause. To be still. To reflect. With her subtle, quiet tour guide badge, she leads you along and shows you the sights and sounds and soul of your own life--the tiny things you may have forgotten, folded, as they are, between what's Significant and Large and Demanding Attention. Isn't it easy to skip over the molecules that make up the whole, as though those tiny building blocks aren't, in fact, everything? The Breath Between is a devotional for this modern life. It's a secret treasure map that soothes the mind and opens the heart while you remember you, too, deserve to fully breathe."
--Beth Woolsey, Mess Maker, Magic Finder, Rule Breaker, Kindness Monger
"'We are mystics all, ' Bethany declares, with an invitation to travel with her into deep forests and inky waters, to follow stars and our own longings, wounds, and joys where, surprisingly, we discover the Light, which has been present all along. This lovely volume provides sustenance for any sojourner exploring the mysterious, wondrous workings of God in and around us."
--Lisa Graham McMinn, author of To The Table: A Spirituality of Food, Farming, and Community
"Caught in the feel of now, negotiating time's touch, The Breath Between reads simple and lovely and true. Bethany Lee explores the sweet ties that bind, but also the mystery at the secret heart of each of us."
--Jennifer Kemnitz, former managing editor of Voicecatcher
