Mary Lynne Gasaway Hill

Horizons of Joy Mary Lynne Gasaway Hill

Horizons of Joy: Poetic Thresholds for Winter offers a guide for navigating the stark seasons we each go through. This collection invites us to take a time out, to enjoy the days shortening and the nights deepening, as we move through our annual cycle of grieving the old and welcoming the new. As this is often a time in which we wrestle with meaning, this collection also encourages intentionality, in the choosing and using of not only traditionally seasonal words, like tidings and mistletoe, but also their common work-a-day counterparts, like stillness and yearning. Rooted in the deep stories of twenty-eight total words associated with the winter season, this book moves beyond the promise of its title, by taking readers on a spiritual quest encompassing everything from Beowulf and wintercearig (winter sorrow) to the Beatles and Santana. In an innovative blend of poetry, meditation, history, and etymology, the book invites readers to revisit and explore cherished but worn assumptions about not just winter itself but the season's multitude of connotations and trappings. In addition, Horizon's companion journal, which parallels the book's format, provides meditative writing prompts to explore the numinous power of each word in our daily lives.