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In this collection, with eyes and heart wide open, the poet sings of everyday life and of our interconnection and oneness with earth, sky, stars, and all beings. -Ellen Birx, Ph.D., Zen Master and author of Selfless Love: Beyond the Boundaries of Self and Other and Embracing the Inconceivable: Interspiritual Practice of Zen and Christianity Seventy-Two Labors, the second poetry collection by Susan Efird, is filled with reverence and extreme empathy for ordinary life. Divided into three parts, her book speaks to the sources of stillness, to prejudice and cruelty, as well as to the unseen and unheard. As the poet writes: Just when we do not speak but slip free/of thinking and sentience/we begin to hear the inconceivable/music of the insentient. Then what should we listen for, where should we look? To the humble pot for one example: radiant the pot awake on the stove ; and to the always articulate wind. Such polarities in these lines, such fusion of them. Her poetry brings a quieting of the mind, reminding me of some of Wendell Berry's work. But here we see a more radical vision of what is nature, what are things, what is self? Might we be able someday to hear the inconceivable music? Perhaps so, if we keep reading this book over and over. -Suzanne E. Berger, Pushcart Prize-winning poet of Legacies, These Rooms, and a book of essays The Horizontal Woman I recommend these poems to any reader eager to be in the presence of a writer with an uncommon generosity of spirit. With singular imagination and clarity, Efird effortlessly and exquisitely unites the sensibilities of poet and Dharma (Zen) Teacher as she fully trusts each moment's and object's touch. -Gregory Hosho Abels, poet, Zen Master, and the author of Never Something Else: Poems from the Eye of Zen and Where to Begin

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Susan Lynn KoDo Efird, Sensei, is from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She is the author of the book-length poem The Eye of Heaven with wood engravings by Michael McCurdy (Harry Duncan, Abattoir Editions) and shorter poems that appeared in Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Verve, JAMA, A Garland for Harry Duncan, and other publications. Her lifelong immersion in literature and service began with an entry-level position at The New Yorker. She has worked as a volunteer for hospice, AIDS, and Alzheimer's patients, with prisoners through Lifelines to Solitary, as well as serving as aide to bird keepers at the National Zoo. For many years before her retirement, she was senior writer-editor at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is the founder and guiding teacher of Sky Above Great Wind, and a member of the White Plum Asanga. She lives in Washington, D.C.

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