Pruning Burning Bushes

by Sarah M. Wells

In pruning, a decision must be made whether to either slowly hollow, heartwood rotting outward, / or grow from green into a fiery blaze in autumn. Pruning Burning Bushes is a collection of poems that explores the intersection of the natural and spiritual worlds with the personal and familial worlds. The book wrestles with this decision--to grow or to rot. Walking from the valley to the highest summit and back down into the depths of the canyon riverbed, the poems travel through the author's childhood filled with family and farm life, new marriage life, and subsequent miscarriages, the births of her children and deaths of relatives, and walking in the quiet waters of faith, sometimes raging and sometimes rejoicing.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 31, 2012

About the author

Sarah M. Wells is the author of To Say One Million Times: WOW (2026), Ordinary Time: Meditations from the In-Between (2024), American Honey: A Field Guide to Resisting Temptation (2021), The Family Bible Devotional Volume 2: Stories from the Gospels to Help Kids and Parents Love God and Love Others (2022), Between the Heron and the Moss (2020), The Family Bible Devotional: Stories from the Bible to Help Kids and Parents Engage and Love Scripture (2018), Pruning Burning Bushes (2012), and a chapbook of poems, Acquiesce (2009). Poems and essays by Wells have appeared recently in Ascent, Brevity, Full Grown People, Hippocampus Review, The Pinch, River Teeth, Under the Gum Tree, and elsewhere.

Sarah's poetry and essays has been honored with four Pushcart Prize nominations and six notable essay listings in the Best American Essays 2018, 2017, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012.

Sarah is a freelance writer. She graduated from Ashland University with her MFA in nonfiction in 2015. She resides in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Reviews

[Stephanie Friant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it! This is on my go-to shelf along with Mary Oliver. Sarah's words sink into the bones. Thank you Sarah for sharing your gift!

http://sistersunderthetrees.com/2014/...

[Sarah M. Wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, so of COURSE I think this book is awesome. :)