Our Daily Puzzle Pieces
A Review of
An Incremental Life: Poems
Luci Shaw
Paperback: Paraclete Press, 2025
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Reviewed by Maggie Wills
I once read in a business book that multitasking is a myth. When trying to focus on two things at once, our brain switches back-and-forth from one task to another. Trying to do two things at once harms both tasks. I love sharing this fact. As if I don’t listen to podcasts while out on a walk, talk on the phone when cooking, or text at working. I still do these things. I want to accomplish the day. I get things done at the cost of forgetting what I did in a day. Poet Luci Shaw notices one thing at a time. Both with intention and forced by her aging body, Shaw sees the sacred in daily living. In her latest collection, An Incremental Life, Shaw notices worlds of truth in ordinary moments in her life. Zooming in and out on aspects of daily routines, spiritual life, and nature, Shaw helps readers see growth and beauty in the small increments of living.
In form and function, Shaw’s poems explore the tragedy and beauty in ordinary, daily moments. Shaw describes the increments of daily life and reveals the power of small moments. The poem’s form often ensures the reader notices each increment. In “Vertigo” the struggle of aging interrupts the poet’s desire to live out her calling. She staggers while trying to perform the simple task of watering a houseplant. This poem does not take the small struggle for granted. Rather, the poet grieves this difficulty. Shaw uses form to focus on one action at a time. “Vertigo”, like many of the poems in this collection, breaks lines mid-sentence. For example, she writes, Hanging onto the handrails / of aging, I stumble through a day…” This separation forces the reader to pay careful attention, slow down, and connect each action and image. The practice of reading Shaw’s work encourages the slowness forced on the poet by her aging body. She pauses in frustration and mundane. She pauses while watering a plant or forgetting a good idea. Shaw sees sagas in this daily-ness.
Shaw also pastors toward a spiritual life that moves slowly. These poems focused on the poet’s spiritual life tend to express challenges and encouragements to live moment-by-moment. In “Instruction” the poet tries to turn down the noise of the world. She wants to tune herself to a more sensitive frequency. A frequency that helps her hear God. And in “Questions like Ants”, one of the most vulnerable poems in the collection, the poet confesses sin and grieves her aging body, “I move more slowly now, see more dimly, require more daily. But I’m moving in your direction.” The poems crave simplicity and slowness. Shaw seeks to slow down enough to see spiritual blessings and battles with more clarity.
In the collection, poems about nature churn with more activity than meets the eye. Shaw sees the full lifespan of the natural world. In “Garden Work” the soil of the garden works even when the poet sleeps. So, the poet urges, when you wake, take in the blessings the garden labored to give you. In “Glimpsed” the poet passes a field of oats and sees the potential future life of these oats. They move from the field to the breakfast table “with milk, a hint of brown sugar, and a prayer.” And in “Grand Canyon” the sight of a trickling canyon stream astonishes the poet. She recalls rafting that same river, now diminished, 20 years ago. Shaw zooms in to reveal patterns of life in these scenes. Though easy to miss, the natural world contains lifetimes of growth, death, and beauty. The poems stop at these scenes, pausing to encourage readers to pause where they live. Consider the lifespan of the banana on the kitchen counter or the park down the street. Shaw encourages noticing the small parts of nature nearby and the big lives in every element.
In An Incremental Life, Shaw switches from the macro to the micro and back again. She separates incremental moments and puzzles them back together while revealing eternal truth. In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis calls the present moment “the point at which time touches eternity.” Shaw practices seeing eternal truths in trees, in writer’s block, and in a bird flying over her house. The poems help the reader do this, too. Readers can, through the collection, experience step-by-step noticing and living. These poems remind us that a new day offers more than accomplishment. The big and small increments contain life’s difficult, beautiful, and eternal truth.
Maggie Wills
Maggie Wills grew up in the Alpharetta, Georgia trying to keep track of all six of her brothers. She graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary with her Master of Arts in Media Art and Worship, where she studied the connections between art and spirituality. She currently serves as Coordinator for Women’s Ministry at Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas.
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