In this accomplished book, Mary Kay Rummel spins words into mysticism and magic. “Not to be ordinary,” she was drawn into the convent where she was forbidden to read fi ction because the Superior didn’t like it. In “Patterns of Obedience,” she writes that she was able to leave when “words whispered in that wind/telling her to go forth and read, to never ask again.” Set free, she read and wrote and traveled, visiting early Irish history and myth. Th roughout her book, bells chime in celebration as her words become exquisite lyric poems. —Jill Breckenridge, Poet, Th e Gravity of Flesh