This astonishing new collection from poet Bethany Lee weaves the thread of her keen attention around life’s joys and sorrows, draws them tightly together and offers them into our hands. With unflinching courage she extracts beauty from her journeys as seafarer and grief-tender, makes her way into the present moment, and invites us to come along.
Her musicality and mystic’s heart sing, and underneath these lines beats the steady pulse of love. The Breath Between offers good company for hard days, water for the thirsty spirit, and a summons to inhabit your own life more fully. You will not regret the time you spend in the chapel of these words.
“I love these poems. Weaving together the textures of light and the rhythms of breath, seeing the wonder in ordinary everyday surroundings, touching the mysteries of night and death and grief, Bethany Lee has put into words some of the deepest human experience, and given it back to us clothed in joy and hope. Her work sings like a bird.”
Penelope Wilcock, author of The Clear Light of Day
“Let this book into your life, and it will be a generous visitor, giving you blessings and consolations, musical thoughts, and glances of spirit light to play across your troubles and your treasures. In the ebb and flow of well-being that is a given for us all, these poems will nudge you back to center, to the true point of beginning.”
Kim Stafford, author of Wild Honey, Tough Salt
“Bethany Lee’s The Breath Between is an invitation to a moment-by-​moment unfolding of each day. It’s a quiet celebration of the elusive happenings, made worthy of our attention through a voice endearing and wise.”
Emily Grosvenor, editor of Oregon Home magazine
“Mystical and joyful, Lee delivers clean lines of poetry with a frank and open heart. Her window to the natural world is one of whimsy and deep connection. She writes of human relationships thoughtfully and with unadorned love. There is magic in this collection.”
Jennifer Springsteen, co-founder of PDX Writers