Critical Commentary
In The Stones Keep Watch John Whitney Steele touches eternal things, and his technique as a poet remembers the history of poetry in English. The things of this world and the words that would touch them are gracefully combined. Here is a poet who has learned from both life and art about endurance and what endures. Like Robinson Jeffers, a poet who appears in these pages, he has absorbed multiple traditions into his vision of western landscapes and experience. These are poems of disillusioned love and resonance.
—David Mason, Colorado Poet Laureate, 2010-2014
Link to a review of The Stones Keep Watch and an interview with the author by Randall Burd.
It would be easy to overlook John Whitney Steele ’s wonderful poems in Shiva’s Dance because this book requires us to set aside expectations. These are not poems merely about yoga poses. They are poems that lead readers into the imaginative energy at the heart of each pose, and through that energy, into the heart of yoga as a practice. People new to yoga will find in these poems tantalizing hints of what ’s possible. Seasoned yogis will discover dimensions that were always there but perhaps obscured by the discipline the poses require. Steele ’s verses remind us that yoga is also about joy—in fact, it is about joy most of all. This book is a gift for anyone who opens it.
—Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, author of Under Sleep's New Moon
