"In 2015 Barry and I were invited to do an onstage conversation at the Key
West Literary Seminars. We loved the idea of it but hated the given title, and
ended up talking on the phone for most of an hour, trying to arrive at a word
that felt home-language to us each. The suggested word, spiritual, we felt
utterly threadbare. Barry's preference was reverence, a quality that ran deep
in his life and words. But mine was not. We arrived, at last, at numinous. A
word whose linguistic root is the act of nodding, a physical, embodied yes.
What his life was."
So begins poet, Jane Hirshfield's tribute to Barry Lopez. What follows is a
compilation of moving messages from Pico Iyer, Margaret Atwood, Sharon Olds
and several other luminaries, that shed light on a remarkable human being and
his legacy.
