The Breathing Field: Meditations on Yoga

This is a wonderful little book - whether you do yoga or not. If you do its that much more wonderful because you can read the short poem (all of which seem to really touch to the core) and think about it as you're doing a pose - body and mind moving together. But even without doing poses with it, each passage is so deep/intense with things to think about that they're nice to just read and ponder. On each two-page spread one side is a poem, the other side is a dreamy piece of artwork.

For me, yoga is about images. So is this small book of poetry and art called "The Breathing Field. The poetry is by Wyatt Townley; Eric Dinyer is the artist. "Slide under the scars where meteors dug their graves in us a millennia ago," it advises. And then we do. As we read, we discard the accoutrements that we no longer need, and breathe life. I suspect that this will be so even for those who do not know yoga for the images are accessible, beautiful and touching. Although I know yoga, I do not think that one must know it to imbibe. Poetry is meant to reach out. This poetry may convert some to drinking of yoga's serenity; others may be touched only in the moment. That is, after all, what poetry and yoga are about-the moment. Townley's images are simple, beautiful and understandable. "Here, inside the chest," she says, "a tiny fear is folded neatly like a sweater." I've always ascribed to the theory that poetry should be close kin to our every day speech. It seems Townley might feel the same way. Unfortunately, I can hardly impart a sense of the images by Eric Dinyer. They are exquisite. They feel like painted photographs, remind me of those patterns one sees behind one's eyelids, deep within the realm of ourselves where reality and soul reside. What a lovely gift this small book of 72 pages has given to me. What a lovely gift it would make for someone else. Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of "This is the Place"