Overview

Lou Ella Hickman's collection, writing the stars, touches on topics that matter. No foolishness or triviality here. These poems walk us into cancer and the Shoah. These poems consider wildfires, slashed cotton bales, and nuns who served as Civil War nurses. We encounter the flight into Egypt, forgiveness of torturers, even ""a hag of a woman"" beside her Kentucky moonshine machinery. Yet while these poems carry true human weight, their lean simplicity gives them a brightness, a beauty, even a kindness that walks beside the reader as we consider their truth. Sr. Lou Ella is a necessary voice, a poet we need. (Joseph Ross)

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9781950413874

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Reviews

Lou Ella Hickman's poems reach out to the most essential music-rain, sun, fire, trees, bees, harvest, and hope. Instead of dreams from lost beings, she holds each ""field of golden wheat."" This is the holy mitzvah she shares with those who wait for others. What she gives to us, sings to each voice of woman or man. -Charles Fishman, poetry editor, Prism: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators Here in these poems, Sister Lou explores the vicissitudes of life with palpable grace. She brings light to the dark places and serves each reader a road, a map, a compass toward sweet peace. -Alice Faye Duncan, author of Coretta's Journey and This Train Is Bound for Glory The poet's job is to erase the imaginary line between the divine and the physical. Lou Ella Hickman does so with passion in this collection of poems that sing the infinite beauty of this finite and fallen world. -Colleen Shaddox, activist and writer As my students would say, ""She doesn't play."" Lou Ella Hickman's collection, writing the stars, touches on topics that matter. No foolishness or triviality here. These poems walk us into cancer and the Shoah. These poems consider wildfires, slashed cotton bales, and nuns who served as Civil War nurses. We encounter the flight into Egypt, forgiveness of torturers, even ""a hag of a woman"" beside her Kentucky moonshine machinery. Yet while these poems carry true human weight, their lean simplicity gives them a brightness, a beauty, even a kindness that walks beside the reader as we consider their truth. Sr. Lou Ella is a necessary voice, a poet we need. -Joseph Ross, author of Crushed & Crowned and Raising King

Author Information

Sister Lou Ella Hickman has a master's degree in theology from St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines including America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news, and four anthologies: The Night's Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker; Down to the Dark River, edited by Philip Kolin; Secrets, edited by Sue Brannan Walker; and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, edited by Tom Lombardo. She has published many articles including seven in Global Sisters Report and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and 2020. Her first book of poetry, entitled she: robed and wordless, was published in 2015 by Press 53. Five poems from she: robed and wordless were set to music as Chavah's Daughters Speak by James Lee III and were performed on May 11, 2021, with opera soprano Susanna Phillips, principal clarinetist Anthony McGill of the New York Philharmonic, and two-time Grammy-nominated pianist Mayra Huang. The arrangement was part of a concert held at Y92 in New York City. At the time of this publication, other concerts were sponsored by the Cleveland Chamber Music Society, Washington Irving High School in New York City, the Dallas Chamber Music Society, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Big Arts in Sanibel, Florida, and Clayton University in Morrow, Georgia.

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