Kirjahaku

Ralph Stevens' poems of quiet observation draw on life's diurnal rhythms. They take in scenes like breaths and when we see as his eyes do, we follow in his poetic acts of sentience. These poems of later life crackle in the stillness of an inner work, still in order to receive what the trees speak. They wait for the field to come inside, listen for imagined voices "hopeful as Hardy's thrush" with the hope that it is always good to receive the world as it is, to beckon to wilderness, whether it be the river, the rocks, the hyacinth, the mountains, the loons, the crows. To stand watch, to pay attention to the world within and without. To ask questions about the darkness, faith, or silence. To process things as an artist-poet. Ultimately to find solace and shelter.-Irene Toh, Editor, Red Wolf EditionsHow to maintain our sense of self in a world that seems increasingly out of balance? Ralph Stevens has always sought connection with the natural world as a way of creating his own poetic equilibrium. His life, centered in Ellsworth, Maine, would seem perfectly suited. However, one needn't move "down east" to seek such balance. Here, as Stevens explores the breadth of his consciousness and imagination, we find, as we might expect, the solitary loon, deer grazing, and a broken robin's egg. But the wonder of Somehow Balanced is where it travels. Here, the raptor might joust with the laundromat; you can find "all the castoff lost forgotten things, /dust-covered shoe, torn lamp shade in a vacant lot." As Stevens reminds us, "Do we really need the dark/to know the light, and/in what darkness/is love proved?" What a beautiful, resonant question And Ralph's answer: "Give us time, /they might have said./It will be dark/ soon enough."-Alan Walowitz, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, Truth Serum PressSunrise, Damariscotta

Water under Snow explores the intersection between the human and natural worlds with an eye toward what can be celebrated in both. A central theme is the call to pay attention to both worlds while we ""have world enough and time."" The collection draws on imagery of the familiar, a bull moose in a school parking lot, loons on a lake seen through a window, a photographer on the Atlantic coast. Time plays a role in these relationships, as in poems that look back on childhood experiences, and in those that reflect on the mortality of things living and man-made.

Water under Snow explores the intersection between the human and natural worlds with an eye toward what can be celebrated in both. A central theme is the call to pay attention to both worlds while we ""have world enough and time."" The collection draws on imagery of the familiar, a bull moose in a school parking lot, loons on a lake seen through a window, a photographer on the Atlantic coast. Time plays a role in these relationships, as in poems that look back on childhood experiences, and in those that reflect on the mortality of things living and man-made.

The 1689 Toleration Act marked a profound shift in the English religious landscape. By permitting the public worship of Protestant Dissenters (largely Presbyterian), the statute laid the foundations for legal religious pluralism,albeit limited, and ensured that eighteenth-century English society would be multi-denominational. The 1689 Toleration Act marked a profound shift in the English religious landscape. By permitting the public worship of Protestant Dissenters, the statute laid the foundations for legal religious pluralism, albeit limited, and ensured that eighteenth-century English society would be multi-denominational. However, the Act was rushed, incomplete and on many issues fundamentally ambiguous. It therefore threw up numerous practical difficulties for the clergy of the Church of England, who were deeply divided about what the legislation implied. This book explores how the Church reacted to the legal establishment of a multi-denominational religious environment and how it came to terms with religious pluralism. Thanks to the Toleration Act's inherent ambiguity, there was genuine confusion over how far it extended. The book examines how the practicalities of toleration and pluralism were worked out in the decades after 1689. A series of five case studies addresses: political participation; the movement for the reformation of manners; baptism; education; and the use of chapels. These studies illustrate how the Toleration Act influencedthe lived experiences of the clergy and the effects that it had on their pastoral role. The book places the Act in its broader context, at the end of England's 'long Reformation', and emphasises how, far from representing a defining constitutional moment, the Act heralded a process of experimentation, debate and adjustment. RALPH STEVENS is a Tutor in History at University College Dublin.