EVANESCENT CREATURE: Poems & Meditations
explores the wisdom & life cycle of women through the archetypes of the wounded/magical/gifted child, the maiden, the mother, and the crone (Divine Feminine). These poems explore birth, sickness, old age, death, and rebirth. In them, Berry unpacks a myriad of experiences that affect and transform women as they move through their lives.
Berry examines the evanescent creature
she's contained since birth, the one who is empathic, sensitive, and fragile in a world that often makes her terrified and exhausted. She reveals the shattered strange beauty of the young woman she was: a woman as muse, catalyst, & traveler in search of all the errant & lost parts of her most secret self.
She remembers her experience
as a daughter, unraveling her longing for more in the face of the pressures of a society that has long wanted women to remain small & stuck living amputated lives. She examines her current role as a caregiver-as her mother's mother-watching as her mother's essence disappears and she descends into full-blown dementia.
And finally, she ruminates on her sense of the furious, incandescent, numinous strength of women
. She raises her voice in defense of the Divine Feminine nature of life itself, of this earth, and its oceans, forests, and luminous wild animals.
Evanescent Creature
is a book of searing poems and meditations seeking to offer solace and nourishment to women as they search for answers to the grief and beauty of life.