Susan McCaslin

Heretic Blood

History & Biography

“Michael W. Higgins' Heretic Blood is as fresh and pertinent as when it first appeared in 1998. His penetrating exploration of Thomas Merton's lifelong spiritual companionship with poet-prophet visionary William Blake addresses the paradox of how a modern monk and an iconoclastic Romantic poet could be intimately conjoined. Higgins reveals how both contemplative artists are 'heretical' in challenging themselves and the social structures in which they found themselves to open to what Higgins calls 'a fully integrated spirituality.' Higgins' profound study is a lure to the wholeness from which all such transformative art springs.”

The Hatching of the Heart

Arts & Literature

“The egg metaphor, the image of the broken shell that frees the life within, unifies the four intimately interwoven sections of Margo Swiss's The Hatching of the Heart. . . . The poems dwell at the place of boundaries, the Celtic 'thin places' between heaven and earth, time and eternity. Yet they are always tied to our human particularities, community, our losses and laments, the tender love of family and friends. By entering these poems, we can experience a world where lyrical utterance still sings.”