Sheila Packa

For the preservation of wilderness and among those who search for home, these poems travel through mine pits and waterways vulnerable to environmental damage and climate change in Minnesota, where the Northern Continental Divide crosses the Laurentian Divide and creates three watersheds that flow into the Mississippi River, the Great Lakes, and Hudson Bay. These stories and images, historical and contemporary, capture the beauty of the north and the resilience of people who are displaced, whose language is replaced, and who find a fluid space full of risk and possibility.

Echo & Lightning, by Duluth Poet Laureate Sheila Packa, uses the metaphor of bird migration and myth to examine ways we relinquish the self. The poems examine the physical ecstatic and devastating experience of Leda, Eurydice, Mary Magdelene, Mary mother of Jesus, Lot's Wife, and the narrator of the Gnostic text, Thunder Perfect Mind. Elements of wind, water, and the flight of geese, swans, gardens and wilderness predominate. The three sections of the book represent spiritual ascension, loss of self, and wandering. There are several love poems. The cover image is a painting by Cecilia R mone.