A Reckless Insistence on Beauty: Poems and Other Adventures

Elaine Sutton’s poems and stories celebrate a life lived at full throttle. Emerging from the cocoon of a quiet Brooklyn childhood into the late Sixties counterculture, she became a seeker, a farmer, a mother, a writer, an adventurer, a midwife, a crisis counsellor and an artist. Elaine wrote daily as a practice, held writing workshops and often taught writing with Natalie Goldberg and Mirabai Starr. Her literary adventures range from solo mountain hikes to journeys deep into her own psyche. She wrote about her surroundings, her work, her children, her lovers, her world and its lessons. Her vivid imagery draws the reader into her imagination, taking us headlong into a wild bear encounter, a Maine car crash and a risky home birth. Her dry humor, wry observations and bottomless tenderness can make us laugh and break our hearts—always with a reckless insistence on beauty.