Reversing Entropy, Luci Shaw. Paraclete Press (ISBN: 9781640608702), 2024.

Summary: Poems that address the decay in the physical world and how human creativity and transcendent hope reverses entropy.

The second law of thermodynamics observes that the amount of disorder in any physical system will increase over time. Only the introduction of energy can counter the increase of disorder and decay. Luci Shaw, at 95, is a keen observer of the physical world as well as the changes we experience in our own bodies and much of this shows up in the poetry in this collection.

One of the delights is that Shaw observes what we often see only in passing. She celebrates the first star at night visible through her skylight. She notices the dance of the lichens. Many of her poems chronicle the drives she and her husband take. She observes the entropy of the autumn, the fall of gingko leaves, the single leaf pinned to the windshield.

Human creativity in music, the arts, writing and other ways help reverse the entropy in our human communities. Some of her poems share her creative process “when the words begin to arrive.” She likens poetry to laundering and describes filling the “fresh, clean page.”

Part three of the collection includes several exquisite poems on Mary and the incarnation, including one poem on “Mary’s sword.” Part four include more poems on the title theme. She captures, in “Energy Entropy” the dance between these two in all of our existence: “Pair the antonyms/energy and entropy,/unusual partners/twinned in the making of love,/to join with all the unmaking/and remaking within/the fluid universe.”

The title poem of the fifth part is “Love in a Time of Plague,’ and captures the healing of what was lost when we could unmask, and behold, and converse with each other. The sixth part deals with the ultimate expression of entropy, death. Vulnerably, she recounts both her brother’s failings, and of speaking and listening over the phone as he breathes his last, and the unfolding of grief. And here, she leans into the ultimate reversing of entropy, the Great Dance of heaven, the dawn of Light, the renewal of all that is only dimly foreshadowed in the creation and our own efforts to forestall entropy.

Shaw reminds us of the wonder of our lives in our world amid entropy’s relentless incursion. Her daily celebration of the quotidian beauties around us rolls entropy back, at least a bit. And her hope in the “deeper magic,” as C.S. Lewis would express it, stakes out a claim to the final reversal of entropy for which we all long. And what a gift to us that she wrote these poems around her 95th year!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.