Shane Seely – författare

The First Echo meditates on the comings and goings of midlife- births and deaths, losses and gains, despairs and hopes. In poems that range from rigorous formalism to breathless free verse, Shane Seely reaches for instruction, understanding, and comfort. He finds solace in works of art- including paintings, literature, and film- as well as in nature, human relationships, and memory. He suggests that, like the bat or the whale, we humans understand ourselves through echo, through the sounds we send out and the sounds that come back. That returning voice, like our own and yet not quite ours, reminds us that to be alone is to be with a self that is at once strange and familiar. Evocative and engaging, The First Echo offers poems on memory, illness, and grief- reflecting on the sadness and knowledge attached to each.

In The Surface of the Lit World, Shane Seely draws on a wide range of sources—from personal memory to biblical narrative—to explore the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, the ways in which we make meaning of our lives. Seely delves into the ways in which family and environment shape us. Poems ranging from terse, meditative lyrics to more direct narratives examine the relationship between what lies visible on the lit surface and what lies just beneath.In addition to first-person autobiographical narratives, there are ekphrastic poems; poems that explore narratives from mythology and religion; and poems based on news reports, radio stories, and audio recordings. Regardless of the approach, the central questions are the same: How do we sense the world we live in? What do the institutions to which we turn for meaning—family, religion, art, literature, science—offer us, and in what ways do they fail us? The answers may depend on where we dare to look.