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 * == Luci Shaw ==

[|Water my Soul] ||> ==Bio== Luci Shaw was born in London, England in 1928. She attended Wheaton College in Illinois and graduated in 1953 with high honors. Luci became the co-founder and then the president of Harold Shaw Publishers. In 1988, she became a Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada; and still is today.

Luci is a well know poet who usually works in free verse, and generally her poems are short, smaller than a page. In tone and context, she links most willingly with the abnormal poets.

Luci is a frequent retreat facilitator that leads writing workshops mostly in churchs and universities. She has traveled to many places such as North America to lecture on art and spirituality, Christian imagination, poetry-writing, and journal-writing as an assist to spiritual growth.

Luci is a charter member of the Chrysostom Society of Writers. She has written ten volumes of poetry so far, and numerous non fiction books Luci writes poetry and is contributing editor of [|Radiax]. Luci is also a poetry and fiction editor of Crux, an academic journal.

She is married to John Hoyte and the live in Bellingham, Washington. They are Episcopal and Luci enjoys sailing, tent camping, knitting, gardening, and wilderness photography. ||

Poetry links

 * ======[|Freezing Rain]======

[|The Sound of a Circle]
||> ||

** Explication ** Explication of "The Grit on the Track"

 Luci Shaw uses symbolic language and personification in her poem “The Grit on the Track” to portray a message of spirituality to her readers. The message Shaw is portraying is that God is always there and as long as the reader stays close to God, ask for God’s forgiveness, and live a spiritual life then the reader will be fine. Her poem is spoken in second person addressing the reader as “you”. Luci’s poem is broken into two stanza’s with four lines each. The poem talks about a person taking a walk and how that person should travel light and travel with a light and how at the end of the day your walk is still with you, leading the reader to decipher the deeper meaning. In stanza one Shaw writes “The ground is always there, witnessing how you walk. You need light to travel a dark path, and you need to travel light. Otherwise the shadows that turn out to be submerged boulders and roots will trip you, and your heavy pack will bear you down into the hard anguish of gravel that is more than your knees can bear. Even roadside dust clings to your heels as if God is in every fiber, a kind of mineral truth present in every crystal of sand.” From this stanza the reader can tell the deeper meaning is that as long as you stay close to God and ask God for forgiveness and keep your life pure that you will be fine. It also tells the reader that God is always with you. In stanza two Luci Shaw writes “Gravity, and the possibility of falling, will keep you aware.” This is telling us that the evils of the world will keep us aware. The second stanza also goes on to mention that when your done walking your walk will stay with you and the berries will stain your soles. Meaning God can “stain” your heart with love and he will stay with you. This stanza also contains personification. Shaw writes “ Each humus clod from the forest floor answers back -- another footfall. This is all my handwork, he is saying. Stay with this mud, this granite. Every other step you take will be a revelation.//”//   Through Shaw’s use of personification and symbolic language she teaches a beautiful message of God’s love for us.