It gets to be tough for me when it comes to grasping matters that relate themselves to god; I’m sure I don’t believe in the man (/woman) living in the skies and having their control over the world as if the world were a computer game and they owned a joystick.
A little while ago, I was writing a poem and, in a line, there I wrote “God has a form, and/that is human” and that is what I actually believe — we being the saviours and destroyers, ours being the fate of the world; and the fate being written by us.

On the other hand, Kathryn Maris is humorous when she discusses god … is faithful when she discusses god … is also dark when she discusses god. There is wit; their is humour; there is poetry. She is what nobody else is.

and my daughter repeated
an awful thing
I say about the English,
that they’re the rudest people
on the planet.

God Loves You came to me when I requested her for her pieces of poetry; and being a reviewer and critical writer herself, she knows precisely how words can strike people. This has been portrayed right through her first book; in the anthologies where her poems have appeared and never ceasing in even her second book — which is this!

Where her richness in the area of words can never keep you from being amazed after her poems, her brilliance has to amaze you from even the Acknowledgements page — numerous poems in various anthologies; you need to be master enough for this. And Maris has mastered the art, and is growing.

In the poem ‘Here Comes the Bride,’ you find a line that masterfully speaks of grief, regret and ease, and art lies in how it is done simultaneously ― “God loves the/woman who sits to your left, but I tell/you and not her” ― and in another poem is a line “Don’t worry: I don’t ever judge/a mother.”

In the whole length of the book, there is almost every emotion a human can feel: ranging from guilt to relief, from realisation to confession, sympathy to strength. And whatnot!

Call me weak, call me ingrate, call me ‘once bitten,
                                                                       twice shy.’
Call me anything, but please don’t say I make you
                                                                     want to die.

Finally, having gone through the book before the third one is out in the coming month guarantees that I’ll go through twice again, at the least; I can assure myself, if nobody else, that such is her brilliance. Such words!