A Walk Between Heaven and Earth

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY MAY 30, 1994

Holzer's first book, a personal journal on writing and the creative process, is a dreamtime meditation on inner and outer journeying--a walk on a landscape of metaphor, on a spiritual path to self-discovery. ``Talking to paper is talking to the divine . . . each time you scratch on it, you trace part of yourself, and thus part of the world, and part of the grammar of the universe.'' Jewelled with keen-eyed observations, reflective musings and prescriptive insights, this is a passionately companionable guide for those who wish to explore the process of writing. In her journal, Holzer chronicles her experiences as a student of the journal form and as a teacher of creative writing interweaving meditations, exercises and travelogue. She addresses her brother who died tragically, her dying father and a child never born. Unbridled and strewn with New Age locution, the journal entries are often fanciful veering into far-fetched and anthropomorphic terrain. But by and large Holzer's prose has a lovely lyricism, resonance and quiet power. Holzer agrees with Joseph Campbell: ``I don't think we are looking for meaning. I think we are looking for the experience of being alive.'' And at the heart of her narrative is this search for the intensity of aliveness, for the tools and writerly craft necessary ``to ride the thunderbolt of the moment and feel that it is real.'' For fellow questers, Holzer's journalistic walk will sound a clarion call to write.