The Breathing Field: Meditations on Yoga

To properly perform yoga as an exercise or meditation, one needs two things...a calm frame of mind and steady, deep breathing. In this small book of 16 poems and matching pictures lies a possible way to both.
Each poem is accompanied by a picture which is only slightly -- if at all -- related to the words. The poems are separated into three sections...one for "Undoing" or getting the body to relax and the mind calmed for meditation, "Stepping Over" where there are poems suited to the rhythm of actual yoga positions, and "Reverse Zoom," which I refer to as the cooling down period. The poems are actually rather pretty, referring to the concepts and spirituality (as in, getting in touch with personal spirituality, not the worship of and particular Deity, making it open to all faiths) inherent in yoga. I think you could read them to get your self in the proper mind set before the exercises or meditations, or just as a celebration of the yoga lifestyle itself. They are very contemplative poems and they force you to think. "The Key" mentions a small fear "Folded like a sweater" and urges you to asks yourself what fears you have folded away in your ! heart. "Corpse Pose" has a rhythmic feel, as if you're being lead through the exercise. They're also filled with pretty images, for example, "This fistful of stars/ strewn across darkness/burned out long ago/in the shape of your initials," from "The Fire Takes Shape" is particularly evocative. I think that these poems might even be better as audio, because sometimes it is harder to meditate while reading (but then that could be my personal preference) than while sitting peacefully and listening.
The art that graces every other page is as strange as it is sumptuous. Photographs are melded into the paints, creating images that can be extremely haunting. It forces you to sit there and study it out, study your reactions to the art. There is one picture than I could sit and stare at for hours, and just loose myself in the peaceful lushness of it, another that I flip past quickly. The reader can meditate on these just as well as they meditate on the poems, for the pictures are well done and intriguing, a good mating of words and pictures. Both aspects are done in a modern style, giving it a New Age feel that adds to the over all sensibility of the book.
This book would be enjoyable to those who love the sort of contemplative poetry it provides, as well as the pictures. I think yoga practitioners who are into the lower impact, higher meditation type of yoga will find this a wonderful tool.

4 out of 5
--Cindy Lynn Speer, GWN Book Reviewer
8/13/2002