Red Ocher
Published on 31. March 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
68 pages
978-1-68226-229-0 (ISBN)
Description
In Jessica Poli's Red Ocher, the wild mortality of the natural world merges with melancholic expressions of romantic loss: a lamb runt dies in the night, a first-time lover inflicts casual cruelties, brussels sprouts rot in a field, love goes quietly and unbearably unrequited. This is an ecopoetics that explores the cyclical natures of love and grief, mindful that "there will be room for desire / again, even after it leaves / like a flood receding, / the damaged farmhouses / and washed-away bridges / lying scattered the next day / amid silt and debris." Throughout, Poli's poems hold space for the sacred-finding it in woods overgrown with thorny weeds, in drunken joy rides down rural roads, and in the red ocher barns that haunt the author's physical and emotional landscapes.
Reviews / Votes
"In Red Ocher, Jessica Poli juxtaposes two rich and seemingly unlikely veins of obsession-that of farming and animal husbandry and that of emotional and sensual intimacy-to create truly refreshing poems about mortality and deep affection. Indeed, what we see in Poli is a poet of tremendous skill. It is hard not to be impressed with her command of detail, her deft use of language to construct, in what are ostensibly specific physical moments, a series of elegiac poems of urgent sentiment and deep feeling. Here is an assured debut of a singular new voice in American poetry."-Kwame Dawes, coauthor of unHistory"Red ocher: a pigment made of rust, of the remnants of collapsing stars; a pigment of the aftermath. And much like its namesake, Jessica Poli's stunning Red Ocher pieces together a type of holy aftermath, beautiful in its corrosion. These gorgeous, penetrating poems build a somber but sacred world of salvage and care."-Gale Marie Thompson, author of Helen or My Hunger
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Fayetteville
United States
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 6 mm
Weight
163 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-68226-229-0 (9781682262290)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Poli Jessica Poli
Red Ocher
E-Book
03/2023
1st Edition
University of Arkansas Press
€23.49
Available for download
Person
Jessica Poli is the author of four chapbooks and coeditor of the collection More in Time: A Tribute to Ted Kooser. Originally from Pennsylvania, Poli now a PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.