Breda Joyce

Reshaping the Light Breda Joyce

RESHAPING THE LIGHT is a collection of rare, essential, high quality poems. Ranging widely, from childhood and family to war and Holocaust, Joyce's work here is saturated with a wonderful light. If 'a cherry tree still debonair // diffuses light in carmine reds' it is the light that flows also out of the wonderful Lucia

and a light that 'releases fresh sea air' from the oyster shell

in Pearls. Disciplined and understated, deeply felt but never sentimental, the poetry in this collection is polished, impressive, essential and necessary. Here is a poet who reminds us that time creates a unique signature in each of us; that though the tidings brought by poets may be frail as glass, they become, over time, stunning and permanent revelations. RESHAPING THE LIGHT is a significant achievement.

-Thomas McCarthy