Kathleen Raine is a poet and a scholar. She has written extensively on William Blake and W. B. Yeats. A great believer in the importance of the imagination, Raine founded the Temenos Academy where the emphasis is upon pioneering an education grounded in perennial wisdom.
The author chose these poems during her 92nd year. She drew upon eleven published collections of her poetry, from the first volume in 1943 until the most recent in 1992, and from other unpublished and uncollected works. Known for her mystical poetry, Raine probes the enchantments of the physical universe and the beauty of the soul. She believes that poetry and religion mine the same territory and that long looking is integral to both.
Raine's visionary poetry contains many Christian images and themes. Check out "See, See Christ's Blood Streams in the Firmament," "Four Poems of Mary Magdalene," "Word Made Flesh," and "After Hearing a Recording of Music by Hildegard of Bingen." In all of these, the touch is light rather than ponderous.
Raine has a lovely reverence for the natural world and all its startling beauties. She also has a deep respect for the spirit world as demonstrated in "The Company" where she communes with "Living presences, invisible essences, / Each centered in its own peculiar secret joy."
Two of my favorites are "Harvest of Learning" and "Soliloquies." In the first Raines celebrates all she has assimilated through nature and book knowledge and in the second, the poet marvels at the intertwining of light and shadow in a wide world of wonders. There are many other delights to be found on these pages including winsome poems about birds, love, dreams, old age, and death.