What Shapes These Clouds

"I can't speak about What Shapes These Clouds without speaking first about what shapes the sentences that have gone into the making of this book made from the sky, this book made from water, this book made from mud and fish and birds, all the words-real nouns-that I love. Early on in this book we are told this about this book: 'There is something about these words, when I feed them back into the water, that causes the wind to pick up and blow hard across the surface of the lake.' Yes! The voice behind the telling goes on to say, 'I can feel something taking shape inside of me.' Yes! This is exactly how this book works, how this book becomes the presence that is 'taking shape inside of me.' This is a book about becoming. This is a book of being reborn and returning as something else, something better, something bigger than what even the sky can contain. 'I've taken on new shapes in your absence.' Let's end this blurb with this: 'What's written on these leaves'-and on the pages of this book-'are words of a language I have never seen.' This is a book to drink in. This is a book to baptize yourself in a new way of saying what it means to be alive."
Peter Markus, author of When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds