Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Space: Meditative Poems by Julie Dunlop

Julie Dunlop‘s new compendium of poetry is at once a delight, a mysticism, an awakening, and an education. From the get-go we are led by the poet to consider our beings in the context of other entities, living and non-living, with whom we share elements, space, and time. Thus, there is abundance in “Entire communities/of trees/meditating.”—and we enjoy a blessing of “Three hawks sweeping down/from the mountaintops//glid[ing] over acres/of graves—/the smooth curve/of their wings/blessing the bones.” Julie Dunlop possesses in equal amounts an extraordinary sensitivity to the world around her, accompanied by the courage to let her perceptions and intuitions of locus lead and inspire. This poet–whose work offers contiguity of the elements outside ourselves and the elements within ourselves–reveals to us a passion and fascination for the timbre and light of all of nature. Julie Dunlop emerges as a poet of supreme sensibility, craft, and insight. Her poems are beautiful, accessible, of great depth, and instructive to the reader. Indeed, through the insights of this poet, the reader appreciates more profoundly that all matter indeed matters.

–Dr. Thomas O. Phillips, Former Associate Dean, Wake Forest University; Director, Wake Forest Scholars; Associate Teaching Professor, Interdisciplinary Humanities

The earth is grounding, the air is carrying the fragrance of love and compassion, fire gives a warm welcome to the maturation of thoughts, feelings, and emotions, water nourishes the soul, and space gives freedom. Where there is freedom, there is love. Where there is love, there is compassion. Compassion is passion for all elements. So this book of poetry is touching all elements of life as it unfolds the inner soul of the atom to be one with the galaxy. Love and light.
–Dr. Vasant Lad, BAM&S, MASc, Founder and Director of the Ayurvedic Institute in the United States and Vasanta Institute of Ayurveda (VIOA) in India; author of Strands of Eternity and the Textbook of Ayurveda series

Great poet and Ayurveda teacher Julie Dunlop shows us in her new book remarkable visions, the way rescue works — from the heart outward, “the heart/ like a canyon,/ a constellation,/ an ocean// forgiving/ remembering,/ and letting go –// then shining again,/ with devotion/ uncollapsible/ as rock, sunlight, the tide.” How “In the damp coolness of a morning . . ./ the raging wound of a regret softens.” This book is Dunlop’s gift to her readers, a map of the doors between our human selves and the universe. She opens portals, one after another, and makes of them all accessible miracles. For meditation practitioners and others, this book is indispensable.

–Hilda Raz, author of Letter from a Place I’ve Never Been Before: Collected and New Poems

In Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Space Julie Dunlop reminds us of the positive bond between ourselves and the wealth of daily miracles that make up the natural and the metaphysical world. With an exquisite sense of language, she reconnects us to the subtle beauty laced so supportively throughout our everyday lives. Reading these poems can bring calm to the wounded or unsteady heart and an ongoing uplift to the spirit.

–Clint McCown, former Director of the MFA Program at Virginia Commonwealth University, and author of The Dictionary of Unspellable Noises: New and Selected Poems