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Abstract
Bridging the material and spiritual world, Seedlip and Sweet Apple takes the reader into the mind of a true visionary, Mother Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker religion in colonial America, in poems inspired by extensive historical research and manifested in a wide variety of verse forms. Merging the mythical with the mystical with the real, the poems are linked thematically through the voice and story of the woman who was believed by her followers to be Christ incarnate in the female form. Ann Lee taught a spiritual path of harmony and joy, which included ecstatic dance and song, simplicity, communal living, and celibacy. Written in a cornucopia of forms—including iambic quatrains, free verse, and prose poems— Seedlip and Sweet Apple honors a complex figure startlingly relevant to contemporary life, pointing to a revolutionary way to work at living—and to live in working—that promises simplicity, peace, and joy.
