That Inward Eye

About the Book

Sometimes life is sustained by those inward, pervading loves that make sense of existence: Nature distilled in a single flower, complete acceptance in the eyes of a horse or a dog, or a sudden connection with the universe when the leaves of trees move in unseen air at sunset. All of these and more--the ironies of history, the human heritage of geography, forgotten memories of childhood--collide and melt into something called poetry--into something that, as Wordsworth said in "The Daffodils," is "the bliss of solitude."

About the Author

Mother of four, grandmother of six, Army wife, ex-professor of humanities, Clara Rising, Ph.D., sold in 1986 without an agent to the first publisher to see it a long manuscript which became the Civil War novel IN THE SEASON OF THE WILD ROSE. Since then four more books, ranging from ancient Greece to the exhumation of President Zachary Taylor, have confirmed her belief that only through the insights of inspiration can the facts of history rescue us from a despair which too often accompanies reality. In the poems of THAT INWARD EYE Rising reaffirms her no-nonsense commitment to a cultural inheritance she considers essential for survival in the 21st century. A large part of that inheritance is an unabashed passion for Nature and for animals--perhaps our ultimate salvation in an increasingly crazy world. Now 81 and a great-grandmother, she lives and rides her horse in the countryside near Lexington, Kentucky.