No Way Out But In: Poems

BORN from fire, and baptized by fire, No Way Out But In is a testament to a soul's nine-month-long grueling quest to regain the life-breaths that once it enjoyed. On looking back over the course of one's life, one can often see many junctures where the lot failed and misfortune struck. The course of one's life, however, is never entirely of one's own making; it is the series of things that happened, and one's own resolves in regard to them.

Exposure to environmental toxins and the callous indifference of those behind them can easily lead into ravaging not only one's health, but also one's course of life. It is in virtue of such circumstances that one instinctively feels the great power of discernment and faith proceeding from the deepest foundations of one's being to be one's salvation, one's healing without which the temple of the soul could be lost. The quest for healing may not have a final chapter, may not have a definite end, but it may have a promise that the more we seek the more we may one day find.

While the poems evoke different emotions and attitudes in us, they also invite us to reflect on them, to consider how the environment in which we live affects our being, our motivations, and the way we face the recurring challenges that seem to follow us as if they were a part of an invisible plan. When we explore the meaning of them from this perspective, we realize that the answers we seek are not always found in light, but also in shadows, and it is within these shadows that the biggest truths often reside, waiting for those resolute enough to uncover them.

About the Author
TEUTA S. RIZAJ, professor emerita and author of eleven books and many scholarly articles and studies, is an Albanian-American award-winning poet, novelist, memoirist, essayist, editor, translator, literary and history scholar, and a short story writer. Rizaj's scholarly attitude is combined with a love for drawing and painting. She lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.