Threshold State

In poem after poem the reader is taken down a psychic well of echoing voices that, at the poems’ best, releases the reader into a subterranean lake of commonality (perhaps what Jung meant by a state of “acausal orderedness”), in this case marked by the inevitable human experience of death. Her face softened being herself Joy / and I saw Beauty and What dwelt within /Whispered me / pool here / in my depths. In a youth-centered society, Phyllis Stowell speaks to the struggles, powers, and wisdoms of aging. Her poetry offers a guide to all, whatever the age, whatever the threshold state.

—Jeanne Foster

When I read Phyllis Stowell’s poetry, I am first struck by the beauty of the sound-play—a dimension under valued by so many contemporary poets. Then by her unflinching confrontation with the theme that must come to the fore for all poets if they live long enough: the confrontation with the Void. Like the great poets of old age- I think particularly of Stevens—Stowell records both the horror and the glimpses of a possible transcendence.

—Alan Williamson