"Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are
standing is holy ground." -Exodus 3:5 "The Holy Land is
everywhere." -Black Elk The two epigraphs that preface Angela
Alaimo O'Donnell's Holy Land introduce the reader to the central
theme that permeates her poems: that holy places deserve to be
regarded with reverence and that all places are holy places. In her
afterward, the poet traces these foundational concepts to her
Catholic childhood wherein religious instruction consisted largely
of memorizing the Baltimore Catechism. "One of questions the
Catechism poses is 'Where is God?' The answer is 'God is
everywhere.' We believed this to be true. God was in church, but
God was also in our house (a crucifix in every room), in the
backyard, in our Buick (rosary beads swinging from the rearview
mirror), at our birthday parties in the basement, and in our own
bodies. And though those places may not sound very holy, they were.
Because God was there. Is there." In addition to affirming this
foundational belief, these poems extend the terrain, moving beyond
the geographical and the physical to the temporal, the carnal, the
intellectual, and the spiritual realms. They assert that our days
are blessed, our bodies are blessed, our minds and souls are all
blessed and sacred ground. The poet explores a broad spectrum of
physical locations, beginning with poems set in the Holy Land and
moving on to places closer to home, ranging from the west of
Ireland to rural Minnesota, from New York City to the Texas border.
She also probes the temporal spaces we occupy, experiences of death
and birth, love and loss, desire and desolation that mark our human
passage. The English word holy is related to the Germanic word
heilig, a word that means blessed and also carries within it the
idea of wholeness. Holy Land attempts to honor both the holiness
and the wholeness of our world-from Gotham to Golgotha, the Bronx
River to the Sea of Galilee-and to honor the holiness and wholeness
of our blessed and broken humanity.
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