Hermit Day by Mary Ann Sullivan

“This book enacts wonder.”
–Annie Finch, Poet, Director of the MFA in Writing, Program at the University of Southern Maine

What gives these poems authority and holds one’s interest is that they arise not from the ravages of the ego but from the stillness beyond it. At times Sullivan makes large claims but we accept them because they are the righteousness of transcendence. At other times her claims are small and we take them in happily because of their modesty and their sense of proportion. Sullivan isn’t asking to be loved. She is loved by her God and when she feels pulled away she knows how to turn around and return to her spiritual home. These are essentially joyful poems, stories of a woman who is alive in her animal self and her connection to all that is alive and that which is always living. We want to read them because we need a poetry that is larger than the individual, the self, in a narrow sense. They are clues to some larger space. They are expressions of that space.

–Ruth Lepson, Poet,  Poet in Residence, New England Conservatory

Mary Ann Sullivan’s book Hermit Day is, first of all, joyful: open to the wonder of this world and the next. The moods of the poems are evocative: “thoughts near the surface / close as skin” (“Vigils II”), “I pray / the pink and green of Monet” (“Hermit Day”), and “people following behind you / like silent ribbons” (“Cure of a Leper”). There is delicacy in this poet’s craft as well as wisdom. Like many of the best poems of the religious tradition, these poems are, ultimately, about peace.

–Kim Bridgford, Poet, Director of the West Chester, Poetry Conference