At the Window

"At the Window" is Heather Buck's first full-length collection of poems, many of which have appeared in magazines over the past ten years. A clear personal voice speaks from these poems, which recount an inward journey through pain, loss, fear and the shadow of age towards rebirth and a quickening of love and spirit. With strong simplicity of style and language, the poet charts threatening areas of insecurity – in nature, the collective past, the unconscious and in relationships. The longing for security, however, is seen as illusory: "I see that nothing tethers", she writes: "Only a certain twist in the mind / Clings to a false dimension". From the acceptance of the inevitability of disorder and instability springs the discovery of a deeper security, a knowledge which has its roots in myth and legend. The closing Biblical sequence of poems about Tobias is a remarkable synthesis of prayer and affirmation, sensuous in its evocation of the loving and the loved.