Heather Woods’ extraordinary debut poetry collection, Light bearing, is a spell binding, light-charged tour de force. Shot through with ardor, compassion, love and wit, Woods invites us to “commit luminous chaos together and render havoc holy.” These poems swoon, dive, dip, swirl, twirl, and ascend to help us transcend our pedestrian daily cares. Word play offers us new angles into the spiritual and the corporeal. Lines like, “This little light of mine,/ I’m gonna fret and pine,” turn time worn lyrics on their heads and wake us from any dolor to light our way. You’ll have no need for extra candles or a flashlight if the power goes out on a windy night. This shining, glowing book of poems will light the darkest room and your world will be suddenly, brilliantly lit.
Toni Mirosevich
Somebody shook, then popped the lid on, the Great Hymnal: out flew these devotional lyrics wholly recast — ravenously tender, carnally transcendent, and fearlessly pitched towards ecstasy. Heather Woods reawakens a tradition that Dickinson, George Herbert, H. D. inhabited, whereby the poet constructs a void of self as an act of seduction, a surrender to language that is also a command of sonority and syntax. Light bearing calls down the powers holily and hotly; it filled “me up such// that my seams would burst.”
Aaron Shurin