Literature

Literature

The Institute invites you to look at poetry through the eyes of Emily...

Emily Isaacson is a postmodern poet who employs verse to transcend the measure of the ordinary for the life of the spiritual and divine. Her love poems are modeled after some of the epic works of early writers and her purity of heart belays an even deeper sentiment than love, but that of the serenity of covenant, and of the severity in a contest of wills between the earthly and the celestial. Her interior model draws us deeper into the pursuit of the extraordinary life as her relationship with her Creator in prayer boldly colors her world.

An artist transforms the burden of their solitude into art, and so Emily does in poetry. Her accounts of nature, cultivation, childhood, and transcendence in her book House of Rain are joyful and riveting. Here her syllabic and often rhyming poems communicate a line structure and rhyme scheme, with most stanzas boasting a length of a predictable six line or seven line structure. The naturalist and the philosopher converse back and forth using the natural world as medium. Their relationship provides the intimate foundation for their insights and experiences of humanity and its habitat throughout the poetry. Her daily work to create a poem with rhyming or syllabic content show her bent toward classical form and literature, with a thesis of verse.

Emily Isaacson is an incredibly strong-willed woman and poet, dedicated to her cause, and gifted in rallying others to change in the areas of literature, art and medicine. She poignantly appoints her gifts as modern contemplatives to a nation in need of reviving. They together assure that love is the common force of humanity, and imply that change and renaissance must begin within the human spirit. The nature of uprising in search of freedom of democracy should not stem from anarchy of the soul but from the desire for the spiritual life: peace and peace at all costs.

Emily’s triangular passion for both myth, art, and liturgy have produced poetry with spectacular bent toward cultivating wisdom in the hearts of youth, producing the mind of contemplation, and the giftings of compassion and empathy. Her training in restorative justice and non-violence have led her to deeply consider and value the words of each person that shares with her, particularly in the exercise of the circle, circle keeping, and the “talking piece” which gives the bearer permission to speak. It is with this permission that she shares her poetry, deeply heartfelt and telling of a spiritual journey she has embarked upon without fear of the unknown.

Emily’s journey into the Divine is marked by her use of words, and lack of words where no words are possible. In this she achieves silence throughout, the ability to quiet the soul in anticipation to receive from a higher source. Where we are in need of someone to take us by the hand into the realm of understanding, this she does with mirror-like tranquility and a serenity purchased from nature at great cost. Her praise and painting of the natural world vow a deep solitude found only where modern society has left no footprint. She reverts to the postmodern understanding of life through characterization and a humble relinquishment of convenience for a deeper glance and resonant line from the one whose approval she seeks most. Emily is most in her genre when composing for an audience of one, and thus she pleases the singular reader.

Emily approaches the field of literature from the perspective of botanist, scientist and artist, in fact photographer. Her captures portray the species of the human race in its most natural surroundings. Her understanding of behavior and emotion stem from her studies in nutrition and psychology, and she rises above the rest with her characterizations of the indominable human spirit amid adversity and persecution. She is a martyr’s dream, with the portrayal of life’s greatest reward for those who are most hard-pressed and overcome.

For further discussion of the writing of Emily Isaacson, visit: Clay Road Tapestry.