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Book Details
Reviews for Evidence of Light
by Betsy Sholl, Poet Laureate of Maine
Marita O'Neill is a poet of wide embrace and deep feeling, whether she is watching first light enter a cathedral window or working overnight at a homeless shelter. ...There is a keen intelligence and wit at work in these poems, and a lightness of touch that makes them truly luminous Like the medieval workmen she imagines in "Notre Dame at 6 A.M.," O'Neill hears a music so sweet it seems "half-angel, half-human," and she too is inspired by it "to bind intricate patterns" and "make a gate between heaven and earth." For their music, their generous spirit, and their profound humanity, these poems are both beautiful and crucial.
by Martin Steingesser
Marita O'Neill has the poet's gift for detail and the apt simile at the right moment. We make breathtaking leaps with her from image to image, in one instance from the criminal emperor or imperial China to a kiss for her departed mother, and astonishingly, land together, beneficiaries of insight and discovery. A "certain kind of joy/ only a living thing carries in its breast," O'Neill sings to us...and, as she says, "something inside of us flies." These songs carry us across borders, from the streets of her childhood to ancient Rome, from Antigua to hell, invariably alighting in a place we can see, hear with our own heart's ear.
Sample from Evidence of Light
Notre Dame at 6 A.M.
It is too early in the morning for light
to make its way through the slender windows,
their tall frames standing over the people
like huddled trees, their stillness
communicating without words a stoic grandeur.
Once in church when I was a child, I imagined
the divine might be the robin that flew in
just as Father Ward lifted his arms to change
bread into body, wine into blood. Bold orange.
its panting and pleated chest swooped over us,
finally perching on the Virgin Mary's crown.
The hard frown from Sister Catherine told us
to concentrate on the mass, to ignore the sleek,
magic way the wings coasted above us, the way
the bird, in its distress or victory, found the ledge
of a sealed window and began to sing, its rolling
whistle dissolving all the formality around us,
drawing our laughter into its world of flight,
awaking a certain kind of joy
only a living thing carries in its breast.
Now, the sun draws back the darkness
from the scalloped windows, and light pierces
the unfolding petals and radiant blue of the glass,
as if all those medieval artists had heard a certain music,
its sound so sweet--half angel, half human,
they used their hands and tools, twisting hot lead
to bind intricate patterns of glass, making a passage
between heaven and earth, an entrance
like a wing's sudden miracle of feathers,
unfolding before our eyes a symmetry of color
and shape so perfect and familiar,
something inside us flies.
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