Lean Toward the Light by Geoffrey Godbey

In Lean Toward the Light, the poetry is shaped by the age at which the author has arrived, “broken and sparkling.” It is now possible, and necessary, to see the extraordinary beauty of the world, and confess how much of it we have forfeited.  Wonder and marvel characterize these poems—the miracle of the opposable thumb, a rock that finally speaks, the futility of ignoring grief when it makes its reluctant way to us, the possibility that the muse is a small fat guy in a pink tutu. The almost too late discovery of women and their superiority.  All the wonder that makes us Lean Toward the Light.

 We are in the heart of poetry reading Geoffrey Godbey’s newest book, Lean Toward the Light. His poems offer the gift of the “extraordinary beauty of the world.” Through his lines, we join the poet as he becomes the “Director of Trees, Superintendent of the Sky.”  He reflects telling us  to “recognize the feast” and know the extraordinariness of love as seen in “She Can Mend.” The poet also dazzles us with poems of color and Jabberwocky lines. In each poem, Godbey returns to the wonder of life—in the matters of the heart or seeing a “child’s sparkler in darkness.” All are a journey through the poet’s “slightly open window.”  His poems give us what we may have missed and now can have. In this book, we delight and hold the poetry of life in the arc of light Godbey so generously  gives us.

–Mary Shay McGuire, Author, Always the Blue Tide Turning, Kelsey Books, 2020