Songs from a Wild Place by Jason Kirkey

Songs from a Wild Place
Jason Kirkey
116 pages, 6×9 Paperback
$14.95

You too have been gifted with a voice
of words shaped around the air;
I am not speaking of that voice,
but the one you have, and are afraid to use.
If you would med­i­tate, then speak;
if you would speak then know that the sound
of your breathing passed through the pure
silence of your body, and all the music that fol­lows
is the freedom that we were born for.
The air is already rushing in to fill you.
What is the beauty that you will sing?
–from “July Leaves”

Songs from a Wild Place is Jason Kirkey’s second volume of poetry after Portraits of Beauty.  Its motifs range from self-​​transformation, quiet rev­e­la­tions found in the nat­ural world, love, and the re-​​imagination of cul­ture and spirit; guiding the reader from the gnosis of per­sonal iden­tity through to the rev­e­la­tion of ‘no-​​self,’ and back to the world where we become bea­cons of deep love and trans­for­ma­tion. In all cases the poetry in this col­lec­tion emerges out of a con­ver­sa­tion with the world at the edge of indi­vidual iden­tity.  It is a call to inner rev­o­lu­tion, of finding the authentic voice and using it to create trans­for­ma­tion in both the human and other-​​than-​​human cir­cles.

Praise for Songs from a Wild Place

“Jason Kirkey ven­tures into the inte­rior places of the heart and shapes both their wild­ness and ten­der­ness into a lyrical radi­ance that illu­mi­nates the outer world and what he calls ‘the places that are.’ As we read these poems, we wake up to a beauty that sur­rounds us even in moments of fear and sur­render.” —Tom Cowan, author of Yearning for the Wind

“Jason Kirkey’s new poetry col­lec­tion, Songs From A Wild Place, is a deli­cious and — at times — over­whelm­ingly potent invi­ta­tion to the intro­spec­tive life; the kind of life that W.B. Yeats some­times referred to as ‘a fierce life of quiet.’ Kirkey’s aston­ishing weave of the per­sonal journey with transper­sonal real­i­ties is sure to enthrall any awake-​​and-​​aware reader. All too often poetry is judged upon whether it is worthy of the reader. Here is poetry that demands that we — the reader — make our­selves worthy to receive it.” —Frank MacEowen, author of The Mist-​​Filled Path and The Celtic Way of Seeing