"Tell them that we are the people who turn the world upside down," said Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784), the founder of the Shaker religion in colonial America. She joined a band of Christians in Manchester, England, who has split from George Fox's Quakers. Their unconventional views and gyrations while worshipping earned them the title of "Shakers." Mother Ann Lee had a revelation that she was the Second Coming of Christ in female form. In America, she was persecuted and imprisoned.
In a variety of poetic forms, Arra Lynn Ross charts her life and spiritual journey. Ross grew up on a communal farm in Minnesota and attended Macalester College. She is currently completing a Ph.D in English at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Seedlip and Sweet Apple is her first book, and it is a creative and compelling rendering of a strange and charismatic leader.
From the opening sequences of Ann and her brother running in the pastures and chasing sheep in England to the description of her death and burial in 1784, Ross's poems catch the dangers and the challenges of this woman who heard God's whisperings, lost four children to early deaths, journeyed to the New World in 1744, used her body with others to warm a room with dance, and rejoiced in the sight of a deer or the pleasures of watching rosehip tea steaming in the sun. In a poem called "First Conversions," Ross writes of Mother Ann Lee:
"Christ has come. A thief in the night
is a woman sowing seeds at the break of day."
