Mending Prayer Rugs by Kathleen Hirsch

As the title suggests, the poems in Kathleen Hirsch’s Mending Prayer Rugs concern themselves with the difficulties of sustaining a spiritual life in a world in disrepair.  In search of answers suitable to her own life, she enters into the minds and worlds of women from the Bible, craftswomen, workers, wanderers, and women we recognize from among the generations of our own families from whom we have learned how hard-won is wisdom. These are not saints. Like us, they fall short, are mistaken, neglectful, hurtful, or simply exhausted and plagued by doubt but, also like us, they have experienced moments when the ordinary suddenly catches the light and takes the breath away. In such moments, we are reminded that everything [we] are / is stitched into / the heartbeat of beauty. As is so often true of women’s work, Hirsch’s craftmanship may seem unlabored, but she knows exactly what she is doing; an exceptional eye, a wide-ranging knowledge, a mastery of the musical line, and an ability to embed “scraps of scripture” and the lexicon of worship unobtrusively into her work result in a tapestry that is utterly gorgeous.

Under the circumstances, she writes in “Good Friday,” I do the best I can, / I light a candle and lay the table. Her best is very good indeed. In this collection, she invites us to join her at the table, so that we, too, might glimpse the weft of the hidden weaver.  I hope women everywhere read this book.

–Marjorie Stelmach, Falter, Night Drawings, A History of Disappearance, Without Angels

When Kathleen Hirsch turns her gentle eye on the ordinary things of our lives—especially of women’s lives— she’s not so much proclaiming as seeking, and inviting us to come with her, as she says in one poem, “listening in secret devotion,” and in another with “the hope / that in the details life abides.” Beneath the clarity of her images there is something rich and alive in these poems, shimmering beneath the surface. As you read, “Keep watch / for burning, winged things.”

–Steve Garnaas-Holmes, UnfoldingLight.net

Kathleen Hirsch’s words are colorful and textured threads woven through the rifts and pain of being mother, daughter, sister, and lover. Her poems are prayers, traveling across landscapes and throughout time. Tenderness is stitched into each design. Hirsch is a poet who listens well and weaves with care. A beautiful book!

–Linda Hoffman, author of The Artist and the Orchard: A Memoir