Carolyn Zonailo celebrates
the luminous in everyday life in poems of deep listening, dream and observation.
In Fight Fire With Spirit: Selected & New Poems, drawn from over
twenty years work, Zonailo’s lyric voice paints with clarity and humour
a vivid world, at once mythic and recognizable. Nature and place, whether wilderness
or urban, are woven into the collection with an ecologist’s awareness of
heritage and culture. Influenced by her pacifist ancestors, the poet challenges
the reader to live with humanity and compassion. A powerful achievement from an
important voice in Canadian poetry, Fight Fire With Spirit: Selected &
New Poems is Carolyn Zonailo’s twelfth collection. The
poet and reader are always walking that liminal space between body and myth, body
and spirit… (Zonailo’s) writing calls forth mythological characters
– not in their ancient state of imagining – but in our daily lives,
how we live them through our very skin… from the Preface by Lucille
Friesen In
Zonailo’s poetry the quotidian is always under instruction from the marvelous.
Looking out of a clear eye, Zonailo tries to find a sure music to translate what
she sees into the wonder of poetry. Bruce
Whiteman West
Coast poet Carolyn Zonailo has lived for the past twenty years in Montreal. She
is the author of twelve poetry books, ten chapbooks and one book of prose poems.
Carolyn Zonailo founded Caitlin Press in 1977. She has an M.A. from Simon Fraser
University, where her literary papers are now archived. She has served on the
councils of provincial and national writing organizations. Zonailo is a life-long
student of mythology and Jungian psychology. The Goddess in the Garden
(2002) was a finalist for the A.M. Klein Poetry Prize. She currently divides her time between Vancouver and Montreal.
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