Mortal Beings by Cynthia Trenshaw

$14.99

 

These poems speak of dying friends, lost opportunities, the grim exhalation that is a last breath. But over the course of the book, we cycle back to realizing the wonderful gift that is each breath, that is the movement between darkness and light. It’s a memorable book.

–Tod Marshall, WA State Poet Laureate, 2016-2018

 

A mystic for modern times, Cynthia Trenshaw offers us poems, unflinching and tender, that evoke the liminal spaces between life and death, seen and ignored, spoken and unspoken. Deeply observant and keenly felt, these poems confide that in the same moment, one can dwell in both contentment and sorrow.

–Kristin Brace, winner of the 2018 Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize (Emerging)

 

Cynthia Trenshaw is a poet rejoicing in the uniqueness of the ordinary. In this volume, her gritty melodies communicate the richness of birth and death, transience and permanence, and, finally, profound and loving acceptance. Readers are always deeply enriched by the clarity of Trenshaw’s visions. She writes with what I consider a hallmark of great poetry: the ending that focuses, refocuses, awakens, and invites.

–Rabbi Ted Falcon, PhD, author of Finding Peace Through Spiritual Practice; Seattle-based spiritual therapist, teacher, author, and rabbi of the Interfaith Amigos

 

Cynthia’s poems are like listening to jazz whose modulations reach surprising corners of language and a wide sweep of experience that will have you looking forward to the next territory she courageously enters to use her craft. You will not be bored, rather lifted into a kaleidoscope of lyrical experience that you will recognize as deeply human with a great heart for the times in which we live.

–Judith Adams, author of “I Wanna Die Nice and Easy,” “Love Letters Only,” and “Crossing the Line;” a state-wide speaker for Humanities Washington, 2017-2020

 

 

 

 

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Mortal Beings

by Cynthia Trenshaw

$14.99, paper

978-1-63534-918-4

2019

Poet Cynthia Trenshaw is keenly aware of mortal beings. She has served as a hospital chaplain, a professional guardian, and a midwife to the dying. For five years she provided skilled massage therapy and compassionate presence to homeless people on the streets, under the viaducts, and in the shelters of San Francisco.

Her first nonfiction book is Meeting in the Margins: An Invitation to Encounter Society’s Invisible People (She Writes Press, Berkeley), which won the 2018 Independent Publisher Book Award gold medal in the Social Issues category.

Cynthia lives on Whidbey Island, Washington, where she serves as a Medical Advocate, writes poetry, and regularly posts essays from her website, www.CynthiaTrenshaw.com.

 

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