Rain, by Marcus James

Published by Anima Poetry Press

“This is poetry that ripples outwards and catches us emotionally and intellectually — its depths are mysterious and its surface, sparkling with light.”

— Victoria Field

These poems ask what happens when symbols rooted in the natural world—which have traditionally helped to make sense of human life and offered initiation into experiences of the numinous—become devalued, corrupted and tenuous. How do we keep a sense of connection between earth, self, and culture when the physical roots of that culture are treated as disposable,or as commodities to be bought and sold — or when profound symbolic material is undermined or made questionable by the legacy of recent history and changing social attitudes?

This collection includes shorter, lyric poems and the long poem ‘Shards of Glass’.

“Defiantly out of fashion, these poems sing out of our present darkness and yet, at the same time, evoke the redemptive power of the numinous often just lying below the surface.” 

— Peter Abbs  

“Marcus James’s haunting poetry aims at finding the mythic moment when human and world embrace and create each other, and something else shines through. These are love songs in the fullest sense of the word. They deserve to be read as widely as possible.”

— Simon Wilson