Weeding the Labyrinth, Poems by Margaret Chula

Margaret Chula’s lyrical poems bear witness to the devastation caused by floods, wildfires, and man-made disasters. But they also transport the reader into an appreciation of nature’s beauty—the song of the blackbird, the grandeur of elk, and the healing power of plants. In Weeding the Labyrinth, Chula kneels down to inhale the essence of trillium, traces her fingertips “along scars of petroglyphs,” and wails “the sorrow in my throat” to a cougar. These poems remind us that we are “on the threshold—unsteady feet pausing then inching forward, like the clematis on its tentative spiral to the sky.”

Sample Poems by Margaret Chula

“Rare is the book of poems I can’t put down, but Margaret Chula’s stunning new collection quickens my pulse:  luscious, musical language, intricate craftsmanship, poems that sing of longing, wonder and joy, that startle with ‘unexpected brightness’ and the playful, yet thoughtful, pairing of opposites. ‘Teasels offer shelter/ inside the domes of their prickly cages.’ The seeds of apples hold both ‘beginnings and endings.’ Yet they also startle with unexpected darkness. To lie down in a bed of lavender is to be shielded, for just those few moments, ‘from blasphemy and bullets.’ And shielded are we, in the space of these poems and the many small graces they offer, from feeling alone in our separate griefs for ‘a world that is burning.’  Poems that weed ‘the labyrinth,’ that ‘clear the path for others’ to come to peace within themselves and hold on.”—Ingrid Wendt, author of Evensong

“I love the botanical richness of these poems, their often stilling insights and surprising endings, each one also a doorway. Margaret Chula brings an eastern American upbringing together with an East Asian immersion and a Pacific Northwest settling and blends them all into a lyric whole where the reader feels bathed by the benisons of the real world.”—Robert Michael Pyle, author of Chinook and Chanterelle and The Last Man in Willapa

“Margaret Chula has long been a word shaman connecting the wild world to the human heart. She bows in devotion for a close look, then offers lyric reports by the kinship instruments of sensation and thought. This book sustains that covenant.” —Kim Stafford, author of As the Sky Begins to Change

ISBN: 978-1625494696, 80 pages, paperback

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