By Mandy Kahn Holy Doors, Mandy Kahn’s third collection of poems, is a lyrical, luminous, and highly spiritual journey exploring meditation, prayer, the afterlife, the poet’s love of peace, and the ever-accessibility of grace. It is also a record of what life is like as our spiritual nature begins to live more fully in the body. Each of Kahn’s poems begins with earnest inquiry and ends with an ecstatic moment of communion with the part of the self that is connected to all things. A poet working within the traditions of the form, Kahn calls upon formal devices, such as iambic pentameter, slant rhyme, and end rhyme, but in so soft and deft a manner that one almost doesn’t notice the musicality so prevalent in the work. Kahn’s technical skill makes tradition feel suddenly fresh, soft, casual, and alive. With Holy Doors, we’re watching a poet both seeking—and finding—the holy in the everyday. The poems in the collection suggest then that the holy need not be pursued—it need only be noticed. Doors to ecstatic experience, as Kahn reminds us, are everywhere. Hat & Beard Editions, 2023 Hardcover, 96 pages Signed by author 7 x 9 inches
