Coming Through: A Book of Days, McQuilkin Rennie

This praise for McQuilkins last book, Seabury Seasons, from the Rev. Dr. Davida Foy Crabtree: This volume of poems will make your heart swell and your voice erupt in unexpected laughter. It is filled at once with joy and pathos as we dance on the rim of life. And this from Ginny Lowe Connors: In Seabury Seasons, his eighteenth book of poems, Rennie McQuilkin weaves words that celebrate life and its bountiful small beauties. A heightened consciousness of mortality illuminates the pleasures he finds in his life at Seabury. In Halloween Migration, McQuilkin writes of a raucous but loving parade of residents in Halloween finery, then segues into the Day of the Dead in Mexico and ponders the migration of Monarch butterflies, each one an ancestor, arriving in Mexico after their long, exhausting journey, like elders struggling across the finish line. The poem ends with a statement that sums up this whole collection: I love the courage of their joy.