Reversing Entropy: Poems -- Luci Shaw, Paperback

From the pen of beloved poet Luci Shaw comes a new collection that celebrates inspired creativity as an antidote to chaos.

The poet's own words best describe the heart of this pinnacle collection of new work by beloved writer Luci Shaw:

Entropy: A measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system, its lack of order or predictability, resulting in a gradual decline into disorder.

Our universe, and the systems within it, constantly shift from their created states of order towards disorder, or chaos. The second law of thermodynamics asserts that entropy, or disorder, always increases with time. Creative human activities such as art, architecture, music, story or film are human efforts to halt and reverse this loss of meaning. Thus, smaller systems, like individual poems, become highly ordered as they receive energy from outside themselves, from the poet. They reverse entropy because they are moving from a state of disorder (all the random ideas, words and phrases available to the writer) into an orderly form designed by the writer to create meaningful images and concepts in the reader's mind (which is where the word "imag-ination" comes from.) This transfer of images, concepts and ideas into the mind of a reader is the task of poetry and the calling of the poet. Just as a composer of music gathers rhythms, notes, melodies, or harmony, organizing them into fugues or sonatas or concertos, so poets work and write to discover ways of arranging their responses to the world in words that introduce meaning and beauty in the mind of the reader.

Which is what I've been trying to do for most of my life.

Author: Luci Shaw
Publisher: Iron Pen
Published: 04/02/2024
Pages: 128
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.34lbs
Size: 8.47h x 5.52w x 0.42d
ISBN: 9781640608702

About the Author
Luci Shaw was born in London, England, in 1928. A poet and essayist whose writing has appeared in numerous literary and religious journals, in 2013 she received the tenth annual Denise Levertov Award for Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. The author of over thirty-five books of poetry and creative non-fiction, since 1986 she has been Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver. She lives with her husband, John Hoyte, in Bellingham, WA.