Prayer in Wind

by Eva Saulitis

After a devastating diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, biologist and poet Eva Saulitis found herself gripped by a long-buried childhood urge to pray. Finding little solace in the rote “from the fox-hole please Gods” arising unbidden in her head, she set herself the task of examining the impulse itself, waking every morning in darkness to write poems, driven on by the What is prayer? What am I praying to? What am I praying for? Who is listening? Each day’s poem proposed a new and surprising answer as, over two years, she traced the questions back to her origins, her Latvian roots, her peasant grandmother, her war-haunted father, her secret-bearing mother, her childhood Catholicism, her obsession with the natural world. Moving from inward to outward, among radically different geographies (coastal Alaska, Latvia, and Hawaii) and spiritual influences (Catholicism, mysticism, Zen Buddhism) as well as forms, these biologically precise poems range widely in their search. Unexpectedly, these prayer-poems, forged out of a solitary confrontation with death, take a reader not out of, but deeper into physicality—of the body, the earth, and language itself. As Saulitis learns, what is most desired is not transcendence, but for as long as possible, “her hands thrust deep in the world.”

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 6, 2015

About the author

Eva Saulitis was the author of the forthcoming book, "Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas," (Beacon Press, 2012). She has studied whales in Prince William Sound, the Kenai Fjords, and Alaska's Aleutian Islands for the past twenty-four years. In addition to her scientific publications, her essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in numerous national journals, including Orion, Crazyhorse, and Prairie Schooner. The author of the essay collection Leaving Resurrection and the poetry collection Many Ways to Say It, she taught at Kenai Peninsula College, in the low-residency MFA program at the University of Alaska, and at the Kachemak Bay Writers' Conference. She lived in Homer, Alaska.

Reviews

[Shel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, strong collection filled with natural beauty and love for this earth. Saulitis' non-fiction book Into Great Silence about orca led me to this work. She was a marine biologist and a poet. What an amazing combination. Love these prayers.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

An emotionally difficult book for me to read. I met the poet when we both lived on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. She was a marine biologist; I studied it. She wrote this book as she was dying from breast cancer an illness I have so far survived.

In a series of devotionals over 58 discontinuous days, Saulitis explores the nature of prayer, coming to terms with her Latvian origins, her illness, and her life split between Hawaii and Alaska, both places loved with her finely tuned sense of their distinctive weathers, creatures, and characters. It is imagistic, at times surreal, often profound, seldom sentimental, usually with an unabashed sense of wonder and acceptance. As I read toward the finish, I found in her words a deepening eloquence of the ordinary that comes close to the ecstatic. The ending of “Prayer 54” particularly struck me: "Clouds parading before / an empty judge’s stand. All the discarded plastic cups. / Coffee cup upside down on the rack."

[Peggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, complex poems full of sound. Transcendent experiences beautifully conveyed.