Book Review

Gateways: Poems of Nature, Meditation and Renewal, A Self-Guided Book of Discovery
By Sylvia Levinson, 2005, 2nd printing, 35 pp.
(Available through www.sylvialevinson.com)

This is a book about experience, the deepening of experience through a meditative approach, and the experience of journaling. The author participated in meditation retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh, the well-known Buddhist teacher, peace activist, writer, and poet. And one could see how the influence of meditation permeates this book. The author invites the reader to participate in a three step process of mindfulness, reflection and activity—activity in the form of writing. It painlessly allows the reader, first, as meditator, and then, as writer, to guide themselves along, and then repeat in their own words what the author has done, namely, write their own book, right inside this very one.

Each section starts with a one or two sentence description of a scene, followed by a poetic rendering of it, by the author. These are mostly scenes of the different faces of nature, but not always. There is a poems on a candle, on solving a problem by letting go of the effort, reflecting on beauty for its own sake, and on moments of quiet both before the day commences, and at its end.

After each poem, the writer extends an invitation to reader, to write down their own thoughts and feelings about the poem and the descriptions, in any form they choose, on the blank, lined page across the binding which faces them.

It's hard to choose among them, but here is a page, as a sample:

In the quiet space between waking and getting on with daily tasks, is a time for gathering-in and being with yourself.

Before They Wake

A shaft of early April sunlight
slants through the kitchen window,
slides across the dining table,
pools on the wild bouquet,
blazing coreopsis, golden petals
arrayed from crimson centers.
In this slumbering household, where
light rays mingle with the aroma of morning coffee,
I sit, bathed in their luminescence,
slowly trace a finger through
a sifting of pollen that has settled
like powdered sugar on the blue bowl.

Before you jump into your day's activities, take a moment Without the distraction of newspaper, radio, TV or computer. How does that feel? Where does it take you? <p. 28>

The implications of this approach to experience extend beyond creative writing, into our lives. We learn to watch our minds in motion. As we watch our thinking, we learn that we can direct and focus it. We could look at the map of ourselves, and then move to where we want to be—places in which we are not attached to negative feelings as anger, should these arise in our minds. This affords us the ability to resolve even difficult relations with other people, with mindfulness, and equanimity that nature offers to us.

This is not a book to rush through, but to read, to experience and to utilize, one filled page, and one empty page at a time. The book includes a short but very functional listing of resources of poets whose poems cultivate similar attitudes of mindfulness in readers, and some book on poetry and writing, too.

Gateways: Poems of Nature, Meditation and Renewal, A Self-Guide Book of Discovery makes a wonderful gift for a person who is interested in cultivating their interior life. It is in a very attractive and functional spiral form, with protective plastic cover. The book is available through the author's website, www.sylvialevinson.com.

Reviewed by Paul Dolinsky
editor@thegoldenlantern.com