The poems of Fire's Goal reflect a year of journeys to sacred river sources in India. Laurie Patton's poems were written after a decade of writing and reading in interpretation of India's most sacred Sanskrit compositions—the Veda.
Beautifully illustrated by Lika Tov's enchanting depictions of the rituals of Hindu life, Fire's Goal is about the consuming fire of longing, in God's presence and in God's absence. It is a kind of early twenty-first century bhakti, or devotional voice, in which the fire of longing consumes the one who longs in ways that are both specific to the contemporary devotee and also accessible to the non-Hindu reader.
Excerpt From the Book Festival of the Goddess
Mother, you are not Plenty but a thin and grueling grace just when I think I might hold you swollen and rounded by coconuts and songs
you vanish into the gilt of the pujãri's pages and play, reed-like, between the sticks of incense you slip into the cement still resounding with bells
just when I think I have arranged my breasts to match the fullness of yours you become a small wind blowing glimpses of red cloth all the way up the mountain.
Endorsements The poems of Fire's Goal are small portals into a realm of devotion. The chosen symbols of Hindu devotion bring us close to home. Laurie Patton's poems work with a clarity and a directness of address, illuminating our daily life, laying bare the exactitude of desire.
—Meena Alexander, author of River and Bridge, The Shock of Arrival, and Illiterate Heart