Books by Elizabeth (Wake Forest University) Clayton

Ebbing and tiding comprise one of the strongest and objective, "real," constructs that help to keep our lives in place, today, as certainly as ever, the despair, the dark, drifting into lighter spaces most often being my fare during the first, into the second portion of my period of greatest lamentations. However, time and intervening factors moderated much of the loss I perceived and wept into bitterly. Seasons, as does Volume II, keep their rhythms, similarly - the everyday routines of life, so that in likeso fashion, vocabulary and themes are akin to those first, but there is a slow progression to the outward, toward light, praise, and acknowledging. Memory, softly- gently plodding, if sometimes grievously, slowly became an anchor rather than a burden, and the nature of my illness allowed friends to support more readily. Still, the hours, days, and nights processed, wandered, waited, and mourned in silence, if less often; beauty remained my constant medicinal choice, as has ever meditations, through our paths of deepest, most realization- the journey is the mountaintop, step by step; it is a giving experience, which has not instance of occurring at, or all, most times, observant. And so the rose: volume II is a record of holding, that lost while reaching, desperately, "back" to where "I once was," ironically walking into it each day. The entire process continuing, a daily self-actualization, to dress with a "sixties" expression. The words of this period describe grief, with hope, while not, consciously, benefiting from it; into loss with coming gratitude, and some suggestion of certainty began to enter, if that not of my choice. Semantics make possible the life of sentiment, and volume II of Quiet Sheba shows the emerging of this lovely, if serrated of this "truly," "real" phenomenon. Ebbing and tiding comprise one of the strongest and objective, "real," constructs that help to keep our lives in place, today, as certainly as ever, the despair, the dark, drifting into lighter spaces most often being my fare during the first, into the second portion of my period of greatest lamentations. However, time and intervening factors moderated much of the loss I perceived and wept into bitterly. Seasons, as does Volume II, keep their rhythms, similarly - the everyday routines of life, so that in likeso fashion, vocabulary and themes are akin to those first, but there is a slow progression to the outward, toward light, praise, and acknowledging. Memory, softly- gently plodding, if sometimes grievously, slowly became an anchor rather than a burden, and the nature of my illness allowed friends to support more readily. Still, the hours, days, and nights processed, wandered, waited, and mourned in silence, if less often; beauty remained my constant medicinal choice, as has ever meditations, through our paths of deepest, most realization- the journey is the mountaintop, step by step; it is a giving experience, which has not instance of occurring at, or all, most times, observant. And so the rose: volume II is a record of holding, that lost while reaching, desperately, "back" to where "I once was," ironically walking into it each day. The entire process continuing, a daily self-actualization, to dress with a "sixties" expression. The words of this period describe grief, with hope, while not, consciously, benefiting from it; into loss with coming gratitude, and some suggestion of certainty began to enter, if that not of my choice. Semantics make possible the life of sentiment, and volume II of Quiet Sheba shows the emerging of this lovely, if serrated of this "truly," "real" phenomenon.

"Three" is a numerical symbol used throughout literature, especially Holy Scripture, to signify completion, the full whole, the circle joined. In Volume III of Quiet Sheba, the final volume of the trilogy, I have, again, my lamentations, with their similar subjects and themes as different and repeated vehicles of carriage for thought, finishing the construct provided by work already known to my readers. There are death- and triumph, joy beside heavy sorrow, but, more, the very purposed movement within experience, carrying toward a conclusion, that of one's own place, again, at table. We do conclude, as we began, at table, but with more cautious steps and thoughtful strategies; and continuing, beauty remains, for many, for me, the antidote to sorrow, with illness and bitter acceptance, full, still, often. The valediction then, is thoughtful: for morning, it remains, sunrise; for evening it falls gently as twilight. But whether a passage in nature, or the appearing of a memory- a hymn or prayer of any of many methods of closure - these verses finally conclude, a coming back to table, to the feast of life, for we come to know that there is no antidote to truth, and ours, now, is the only life we can objectively know; when living is no longer a reality, it is not. As Stephen Crane's desert beast states, while eating its own heart, crying "bitter, bitter" - we, as the beast, embrace, take into ourselves - eat, drink, - all - for it is the only one we have, and "we love it" - if to the side, to use the French poet, Verlaine's poignant - strikingly powerful - closing words describing the falling seasonal ambiance of the year: "Et je pleure" - (And I weep) - the fullest source of working truth, reason, giving up the response - poetic - beautiful or no: "And I weep." In life, we are not wise, but willful, yet in the holistic view, we live our most sentiment lying over reason, it very now hurting, but with that arrangement with which we look, always, to find the grail, the feast, the peace.