Still Water Carving Light: Poems

Shumaker’s (Cairn) latest poetry collection delves into deep loss, the loss of a loved one and the loss of the world as readers know it, while also exploring the power of memory and resilience. Her lines are deeply felt and elegantly rendered, as in “A Day of Gifts”: “Twenty years married, / late in life married, / we witness in one another / sweet softening, sweet / slowing / agony.” Shumaker’s poems witness the death of a dear one and the death of her mother via an autopsy report some 50-years after the fact. She tells of the death of the desert by climate change and of witnessing the chaos of the COVID pandemic. She writes about her affinity with the natural world, as in “Attending To the World”: “You look to kinship / to learn how to act, grandmother / spider’s web / spangled with dew.” The book is beautifully designed, with birds feet weaving across the pages, as if walking in the snow.