You Teach Me Light

These poems are not muscular, literary, or award-winning. Instead they are slightly dangerous, filled with banana peels, sharp objects, reflex hammers, and various items you could not send through US mail. They also contain stories, possibly one of the most dangerous things ever invented. There are stories about trees, people, other people, artwork, near-misses of artwork, bears, barns, and a convention of angels. There are stories of forgiveness, remembrance, peaches, peonies, and poems themselves.
For ease of use, each poem is equipped with useful punctuation marks and extra white space. Handle with care. You may be stuck with them.

""What hit me between the eyes was just how authentic, how real, how honest these musings and poems are. Melaney Poli has laid bare her soul. We are privileged to behold her.""
--Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town

""This collection had me at the start with 'the monk who wrote himself to death,' which could be the drumbeat for anyone on a spiritual journey. One suspects there is a great deal of the poet in these poems, but then I'm not sure, since I find much of myself in them as well. Highly recommended.""
--Jon M. Sweeney, coauthor of Meister Eckhart's Book of the Heart, and author of Phyllis Tickle: A Life

""In her poem 'What Poetry Wants' Melaney Poli writes, 'the surprise of butterflies blowing around you / the scalpel that removes something hard from your soul,' thus encapsulating what her impressive debut collection achieves. In You Teach Me Light we experience a tendering at the expense of our rendering. 'Surrender the carapace of your soul,' her verses seem to say. And when we do, how fresh, how full, how blessed is their touch!""
--Sofia M. Starnes, author of The Consequence of Moonlight

""Alighting in surprising places, these lovely, lively poems invite us to imagine people, places, and historical events with a childlike freedom that entertains what might have been in all its parabolic possibility. The poet shows how deep faith delights in whimsy, how the smallest encounter can become an occasion of grace, and how poetic lines, in their brokenness, call us out of the shaded and well-trodden paths of prose into sudden and marvelous light.""
--Marilyn McEntyre, author of Make a List

Melaney Poli is an artist and writer, and a nun of the Order of Julian of Norwich.