In Imagine This: Creating the Work You Love, Maxine Clair (Rattlebone) deftly blends memoir with self-help and transforms the challenges of her own life into inspiration for anyone hoping to embrace a life of meaning and purpose. Clair opens with a vignette of two seemingly contradictory versions of her own childhood. In one, filled with light, color, music, games and unconditional love, "every day is a tableau of summer." In the other childhood, images of poverty, deprivation, loneliness and headaches proliferate, and "every day is marked by bleak winter." An account of her abusive marriage follows, but underpinning the narrative of her early years is her redeeming belief that a benevolent universe provides guideposts throughout life, alerting us when we stray from our true path toward fulfillment.
Clair shares the "sacred practices" (journaling, meditation, affirmation, present moment awareness) that helped her discard destructive patterns in order to embrace creative, life-giving choices; at the end of every chapter, she includes concrete instructions, examples and exercises to help readers find their own voices and dreams. Vivid images like "trees shouting in blossoms or exploding in shades of autumn's hallelujah" and "snow quietly softening the contours of the visible and invisible world" make Clair's true calling as a poet seem as clear as her gift for helping others find their own passions. And with chapter titles like "Tuning In to the Sacred Within," "Finding What Is Seeking You" and "Hovering Between Endings and Beginnings," there is something here for everyone. --Kristen Galles from Book Club Classics