Second Sky: 10 (Poiema Poetry)

In Second Sky Runyan intertwines the life and writings of the Apostle Paul with the spiritual journey of a modern suburban woman confronting the broken world. Second Sky wrestles with the deeply personal challenges presented in Pauls letters and experiences: putting on the new self burying oneself with Christ and counting all as loss while driving through snowstorms reading horrific headlines and bathing the family dog. These are not simple poems of religious inspiration; they are steely encounters with the living God. Runyan invites us to work out our salvation in rusted Cadillacs operating rooms and packs of wild coyotes. Meanwhile Paul runs from the collapsing walls of his prison cell toward shipwrecks and vipers meeting us on our own roads to Damascus the earth breaking open to a second sky of faith. While these poems are anchored by Pauls familiar words his directives and admonishments Tania Runyans plucky responses challenge traditional pictures of the believers life. Gods grace appears in many guises in her poems--from a frisbee laid bare in the melting snow to a drive on icy roads with a carload of children. These are spirited and intimate pictures of a suburban womans encounter with holy mystery often both unpredictable and oddly comforting. --Jill Palaez Baumgaertner Professor of English Wheaton College This is a remarkable book. The poems are brief posts about the fissures--cataclysms--emergencies in the daily life of a parent a spouse a friend. It was only after devouring the book that I went back to check on how each poem glosses a passage of Scripture. There are layers and layers here to uncover. I will discover them slowly but meanwhile I love the fierce brio of these poems. I love their intelligence and urgency. --Jeanne Murray Walker Professor of English University of Delaware Tania Runyan an NEA fellow is the author of A Thousand Vessels Simple Weight and Delicious Air which won the Book of the Year from the Conference on Christianity and Literature. Her work has appeared in dozens of journals including Poetry Image The Christian Century Books & Culture Mid-American Review and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. She lives with her family in northern Illinois.