The Hatching of the Heart

Poems of nature and childhood initiate this poetic journey of the heart. The loss of family and friends prompts the search for divine relation. Pastoral lyrics, elegies, and colloquies culminate in the ""necessary"" breaking of the heart as it mystically ""hatches"" and the Incarnate life shines through. ""Margo Swiss goes into the country of George Herbert and shapes a poetry out of grief and grace. She searches for the exact center of what we are, the place of loss and rebirth, and her words return as messengers of glory."" --Richard Greene, author of Crossing the Straits ""These are brave, compassionate poems. When I began publishing many years ago with Margo Swiss, I looked forward to her byline in every magazine, as I admired then what I admire now--the maturity, the no-nonsense stare in the face of beauty and making of it, no more and no less than the mirror of creation. But now the poems are breathtakingly stark, inviting, wide-ranging in their compassion and locations. . . . I congratulate the readership of spiritual verse in the best sense, since Margo Swiss has opened her store of significant contribution to the canon."" --Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, author of The Dark Time of Angels ""The egg metaphor, the image of the broken shell that frees the life within, unifies the four intimately interwoven sections of Margo Swiss's The Hatching of the Heart. . . . The poems dwell at the place of boundaries, the Celtic 'thin places' between heaven and earth, time and eternity. Yet they are always tied to our human particularities, community, our losses and laments, the tender love of family and friends. By entering these poems, we can experience a world where lyrical utterance still sings."" --Susan McCaslin, author of The Disarmed Heart ""Margo Swiss's new book of poems is devout, intense, often heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting. These are poems for the wounded and grief-smitten: those who know and believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel, but who also know from experience that the light starts out dim and small. With her at times jagged, stepping-stone syntax and unexpected surprising bursts of rhyme, Swiss disarms us with her clarity and honesty. And she brings a touch of the mystic to this collection of spiritually frank poems."" --John Terpstra, author of The Boys Margo Swiss teaches English and Creative Writing at York University, Toronto. In addition to academic publications on Milton and Donne, her poems have appeared in magazines and five anthologies. She has previously published Crossword: A Woman's Narrative (1996) and edited Poetry and Liturgy: An Anthology of Canadian Poets (2007), both in The St. Thomas Poetry Series.