Mossammaparast’s fierce environmental sensibility is apparent as she draws our attention to the “colossal humus / underfoot / […] / percolating / to testify” (47). Her key themes of location and dislocation are realised through poems that ponder travel, home, and the body: “I worry of course, about how I am to find my way home” (33). In a characteristically elegant transition to the next section, she incorporates the book’s subtitles to affirm, “I can love the sun enough / sufficiently for here and there / to exist in communion” (34).

The third section, ‘F i e l d’, adopts a multi-dimensional world view, slanting the reader’s angle of perception. Mossammaparast amplifies her directional language to enhance our (dis)orientation, and ultimately, our elevation. Undulating lines at the right read:

in the direction


of the transcendental


between the Beginning


and the End


the absurd

(62)

And, in a parallel left column:

I wait in the field for the overlay,
where lake and sky are one

(62)

The poems become otherworldly and specifically Bahá’í, with prayer as a vehicle teleporting us from physical to spiritual emplacement, driven by longing and belonging. “I cannot go home / except to turn to It / circling upon the living beat” (66). The Bahá’í Faith, known for its openness to other faiths, originated in Iran, a place of heritage for Mossammaparast. She invokes the Sufi realms of existence in ‘1. Cosmos’ with repeated water, fire, and mountain imagery, in a swirl of real and imagined flora and fauna: “I grip the horn of a unicorn and gallop / towards the sun, rising” (64). Her poems conflate nature and divinity: “First principle: the springtime of the tree / The root of the root / Still Centre upon which bodies move […] / I am this, eternal, tree” (65). Particularly beautiful is ‘3. Names’, in which Arabic excerpts from the Islamic 99 Names of God stand alongside columns of poetry in English, suggesting a call-and-response litany:

to perceive the Perceiver

in the field where everything is One,
Continuous
One

and lift my leafing arms through the
       heaviness
made light by Light
Who delays the gold

O First and Last!
Find me too, where I am

(70)

A field is not just an open space but a perspective, a mappable dimension of depth and height. Mossammaparast’s interpretation of a field recalls the Sufi poet Rumi’s – a sacred place “beyond ideas” where she seeks to meet the reader (Barks 36). In ‘At The Gate’ (the poem preceding ‘F i e l d’), the “spire” represents culmination, an apex of physical place, and access through effort to the spiritual world (Mossammaparast 58). Recognition dawns that earlier motifs (e.g., mountains) have primed us with the sensation of climbing to a vantage point.

Theology is rarely hailed as relevant in contemporary Australian poetry, which more often focuses on quotidian mysteries and alludes to divinity obliquely. At first, I assumed that this book’s magnificent prayers were situated at the back due to their lesser commercial appeal. I was wrong; they are there, in effect, as an oasis to immerse ourselves in at the end of our journey. ‘F i e l d’ connects all of the previous poems, revealing their true context so that the book’s structure becomes its masterstroke. Perhaps visiting such religious territory is a privilege best reserved for readers who finish the collection.

Again, the closing poems integrate the section: “This is what living will be like: synthesising / And Field said / […] / Let there be light” (73). In ‘9. Interpretation’, the book’s motifs are neatly combined. The final poem, ‘Epilogue’, relays the author’s wish to testify for her faith, ostensibly sharing the book’s core purpose, “to make greater the field I fathom / suns, sea-beds, the valve that opens and closes / featherless, human among the human throng / now that human being Proved” (78).

And to Ecstasy will attract readers of spiritual, ecological, and cultural poetry. It reaches skilfully past other books of these genres, past natural into supernatural landscapes, and past sociocultural divisions into unity. The book’s title is a promise kept; by its completion, after reassessing the apparent polarities of location and dislocation, the reader has indeed glimpsed ecstasy.