Songs from the Depths

From the Foreword, by Dennis Patrick Slattery As I read Beth Anne Boardman’s insightful meditative poems in this new volume, I could not help but think of the relation between poetry and prayer. All of the poems she includes carry a prayerful tone and depth.

Prayer, like poetry, is an act of imagination; the former contains or harbors a form of poiesis, a Greek word that suggests a making or forming or shaping something into a coherent form. One cannot help but sense Beth’s struggles and achievements as she negotiates that narrow gap between poetry and prayer, if indeed there is a gap at all… . Her poems are continual surprises at life’s uncertainties bumping up against life’s claimed securities. In the tension between these two is the ellipses of life … where we are asked to fill in what we live and how we live it. Her poems are fine and lasting guides to such a meditative place of prayer.