Breathing Lessons

By: Susan A. Jefts

Published by Shanti Arts Publishing, 2023

The poems by Susan Jefts in Breathing Lessons are ones of place and spirit, journeying through diverse landscapes full of their own language, music, and agency. A Japanese garden, an Adirondack peak, the view from a train along the Hudson River-in all of these places are distinct images and sensations, but also something else: a presence that feels deep and endless. It might live on a vine in "autumn's half-born light" or in the moan of a cello in April, rising over the city "like a dark bird in flight." And when such moments merge with the author's more human world, small spaces or bardos can form, making an opening for something new to come through, for something just beyond the apparent to be let in. Some of these poems enter that realm of true meeting and possibility, while others stay at the threshold looking in, and both are compelling places to be.