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Reversing Entropy: Poems
From the pen of beloved poet Luci Shaw comes a new collection that celebrates inspired creativity as an antidote to chaos.
The poet’s own words best describe the heart of this pinnacle collection of new work by beloved writer Luci A measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system, its lack of order or predictability, resulting in a gradual decline into disorder. Our universe, and the systems within it, constantly shift from their created states of order towards disorder, or chaos. The second law of thermodynamics asserts that entropy, or disorder, always increases with time. Creative human activities such as art, architecture, music, story or film are human efforts to halt and reverse this loss of meaning. Thus, smaller systems, like individual poems, become highly ordered as they receive energy from outside themselves, from the poet. They reverse entropy because they are moving from a state of disorder (all the random ideas, words and phrases available to the writer) into an orderly form designed by the writer to create meaningful images and concepts in the reader’s mind (which is where the word “imag-ination” comes from.) This transfer of images, concepts and ideas into the mind of a reader is the task of poetry and the calling of the poet. Just as a composer of music gathers rhythms, notes, melodies, or harmony, organizing them into fugues or sonatas or concertos, so poets work and write to discover ways of arranging their responses to the world in words that introduce meaning and beauty in the mind of the reader. Which is what I’ve been trying to do for most of my life.
The poet’s own words best describe the heart of this pinnacle collection of new work by beloved writer Luci A measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system, its lack of order or predictability, resulting in a gradual decline into disorder. Our universe, and the systems within it, constantly shift from their created states of order towards disorder, or chaos. The second law of thermodynamics asserts that entropy, or disorder, always increases with time. Creative human activities such as art, architecture, music, story or film are human efforts to halt and reverse this loss of meaning. Thus, smaller systems, like individual poems, become highly ordered as they receive energy from outside themselves, from the poet. They reverse entropy because they are moving from a state of disorder (all the random ideas, words and phrases available to the writer) into an orderly form designed by the writer to create meaningful images and concepts in the reader’s mind (which is where the word “imag-ination” comes from.) This transfer of images, concepts and ideas into the mind of a reader is the task of poetry and the calling of the poet. Just as a composer of music gathers rhythms, notes, melodies, or harmony, organizing them into fugues or sonatas or concertos, so poets work and write to discover ways of arranging their responses to the world in words that introduce meaning and beauty in the mind of the reader. Which is what I’ve been trying to do for most of my life.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Paperback
Published April 2, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 18, 2025
Magnificent reflections on aging, death, and all the small things that make life meaningful. Shaw manages to hope for a new creation without diminishing the significance of one in which things fall apart and die. If I can write poetry half as lucid as this when I’m nearing 100, I’ll have lived a good life.
August 11, 2024
My favorite book of poetry ever.
June 21, 2024
Summary: Poems that address the decay in the physical world and how human creativity and transcendent hope reverses entropy.
The second law of thermodynamics observes that the amount of disorder in any physical system will increase over time. Only the introduction of energy can counter the increase of disorder and decay. Luci Shaw, at 95, is a keen observer of the physical world as well as the changes we experience in our own bodies and much of this shows up in the poetry in this collection.
One of the delights is that Shaw observes what we often see only in passing. She celebrates the first star at night visible through her skylight. She notices the dance of the lichens. Many of her poems chronicle the drives she and her husband take. She observes the entropy of the autumn, the fall of gingko leaves, the single leaf pinned to the windshield.
Human creativity in music, the arts, writing and other ways help reverse the entropy in our human communities. Some of her poems share her creative process “when the words begin to arrive.” She likens poetry to laundering and describes filling the “fresh, clean page.”
Part three of the collection includes several exquisite poems on Mary and the incarnation, including one poem on “Mary’s sword.” Part four include more poems on the title theme. She captures, in “Energy Entropy” the dance between these two in all of our existence: “Pair the antonyms/energy and entropy,/unusual partners/twinned in the making of love,/to join with all the unmaking/and remaking within/the fluid universe.”
The title poem of the fifth part is “Love in a Time of Plague,’ and captures the healing of what was lost when we could unmask, and behold, and converse with each other. The sixth part deals with the ultimate expression of entropy, death. Vulnerably, she recounts both her brother’s failings, and of speaking and listening over the phone as he breathes his last, and the unfolding of grief. And here, she leans into the ultimate reversing of entropy, the Great Dance of heaven, the dawn of Light, the renewal of all that is only dimly foreshadowed in the creation and our own efforts to forestall entropy.
Shaw reminds us of the wonder of our lives in our world amid entropy’s relentless incursion. Her daily celebration of the quotidian beauties around us rolls entropy back, at least a bit. And her hope in the “deeper magic,” as C.S. Lewis would express it, stakes out a claim to the final reversal of entropy for which we all long. And what a gift to us that she wrote these poems around her 95th year!
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
The second law of thermodynamics observes that the amount of disorder in any physical system will increase over time. Only the introduction of energy can counter the increase of disorder and decay. Luci Shaw, at 95, is a keen observer of the physical world as well as the changes we experience in our own bodies and much of this shows up in the poetry in this collection.
One of the delights is that Shaw observes what we often see only in passing. She celebrates the first star at night visible through her skylight. She notices the dance of the lichens. Many of her poems chronicle the drives she and her husband take. She observes the entropy of the autumn, the fall of gingko leaves, the single leaf pinned to the windshield.
Human creativity in music, the arts, writing and other ways help reverse the entropy in our human communities. Some of her poems share her creative process “when the words begin to arrive.” She likens poetry to laundering and describes filling the “fresh, clean page.”
Part three of the collection includes several exquisite poems on Mary and the incarnation, including one poem on “Mary’s sword.” Part four include more poems on the title theme. She captures, in “Energy Entropy” the dance between these two in all of our existence: “Pair the antonyms/energy and entropy,/unusual partners/twinned in the making of love,/to join with all the unmaking/and remaking within/the fluid universe.”
The title poem of the fifth part is “Love in a Time of Plague,’ and captures the healing of what was lost when we could unmask, and behold, and converse with each other. The sixth part deals with the ultimate expression of entropy, death. Vulnerably, she recounts both her brother’s failings, and of speaking and listening over the phone as he breathes his last, and the unfolding of grief. And here, she leans into the ultimate reversing of entropy, the Great Dance of heaven, the dawn of Light, the renewal of all that is only dimly foreshadowed in the creation and our own efforts to forestall entropy.
Shaw reminds us of the wonder of our lives in our world amid entropy’s relentless incursion. Her daily celebration of the quotidian beauties around us rolls entropy back, at least a bit. And her hope in the “deeper magic,” as C.S. Lewis would express it, stakes out a claim to the final reversal of entropy for which we all long. And what a gift to us that she wrote these poems around her 95th year!
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
July 3, 2024
Luci Shaw keeps on demonstrating that there is no expiration date on a thriving life or a lively mind. Her new poetry collection reads like field notes for the distracted or the cynical, a user’s manual for the soul in need of permission to stop, pay attention, and live in hope.
Shaw inhabits a worldview that has not prevented her from viewing the world in all its beauty. Watching for wonder every “God-blessed, lucky day,” it finds her in fragrant lilies, fluttering birds, the day’s “bright overtures of light,” and the annual astonishment of spring.
Since she often writes her poems on the fly, I always receive her poetry collections as a vicarious travelogue. However, one does not live for ninety-plus years without experiencing loss. Shaw pays somber tribute to “the jagged narrative” of her brother’s long life with all its achievement alongside its stormy failure.
As she ages, it’s clear that her eyes have turned toward a rich future in which “entropy will be utterly reversed” by God’s generous outpouring of true life. “Such a spendthrift God we have!”
Shaw inhabits a worldview that has not prevented her from viewing the world in all its beauty. Watching for wonder every “God-blessed, lucky day,” it finds her in fragrant lilies, fluttering birds, the day’s “bright overtures of light,” and the annual astonishment of spring.
Since she often writes her poems on the fly, I always receive her poetry collections as a vicarious travelogue. However, one does not live for ninety-plus years without experiencing loss. Shaw pays somber tribute to “the jagged narrative” of her brother’s long life with all its achievement alongside its stormy failure.
As she ages, it’s clear that her eyes have turned toward a rich future in which “entropy will be utterly reversed” by God’s generous outpouring of true life. “Such a spendthrift God we have!”
June 5, 2024
i liked her other collections esp Poems of Creation a lot better, and these are mostly sort of short essays, i think, rather than poems, but worth it for standouts "new leaf restaurant" "grace" and "the sift of grief"
July 6, 2024
I've always enjoyed Shaw's poetry. I like the creativity of this poem and was moved by her poems on the death of her brother. Relationships are complicated and love is still there.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews