Back to the Light: Poems

Acclaimed poet George Ella Lyon returns with a brilliant new collection that traces the course of a woman’s life from girlhood to mature female wisdom. From the introductory poem, Little Girl Who Knows Too Much, readers embark on a journey from youth, with its darker moments and denials of voice and story, to a place of strength and power with the poems themselves as a guide. The collection follows the narrator as she reconnects with her body and recovers memories of violence from early childhood as well as the wilderness of adolescence and of young wife- and motherhood. Gradually, a wider vision appears to her, and she turns to the Great Mother in all her manifestations – writers, teachers, singers, Earth Herself–to reach new regions of self-knowledge and inner strength. In so doing, the narrator reaches beyond her personal experience and begins a healing process that situates her story within the larger human story. Alternately witty, charming, tender, thought-provoking, and bracing, Back to the Light expresses a vision of breathtaking breadth and depth. Following the arc of a woman’s life, the collection traces the cycles of growth and change the narrator experiences in becoming more herself and finding the spirit to persevere while lyrically demonstrating the power of poetry to help and heal.