A Slender Grace

<DIV><I>A Slender Grace</I> is Rod Jellema's first collection of poetry since his highly praised <I>The Eighth Day</I> appeared almost twenty years ago. In this volume which consists of 67 poems almost all of them new Jellema confronts a culture that loves bigness with poems that notice what is slender -- the thin lines the threads by which some things hang the narrow crevices through which divine grace offers to reconcile humans to each other and to the Creator.<br><br>These beautifully crafted pieces are not religious poems in the usual sense. As Jellema explains These poems individually are not spiritual message-bearers. Still it is inevitable that my belief in a beautiful world that is broken and divinely redeemed -- though I am not preaching about it -- should be evident throughout. And it is as Jellema takes a second deeper look at such things as green beans in all their glory a lovesick lonely young man in a Laundromat and his own sense of the world while snorkeling in the Red Sea.<br><br></DIV>