In thrilling poems of metamorphosis and birth, death and dissolution, Stephanie Pippin鈥檚 debut collection returns us to a world unshorn of wildness. Delivering accident and hunger, love and grief, nature in these poems is beautiful and brutal, 鈥渁 hellish magnificence鈥 that both invites and denies the meanings we project onto it. Refusing the domesticated comfort of our usual myths, Pippin reminds us of our place as creatures among others in a world where 鈥渨hat isn鈥檛 dead / is dying,鈥 and where the thrill of predatory flight commingles with the desperation of the prey.
This mesmerizing and astonishingly assured collection offers a message as harrowing as it is essential. Faced with the hard master of necessity鈥斺渁ngel stinking of his own / excitement鈥濃攁nd bare before what Mallarm茅 called 鈥渢he horror of the forest,鈥 we are helpless, finally, to do anything to save what we love. Our sole task, these poems insist, is to look on while we can, and to love harder.
鈥淭hese quiet poems stunned me: direct and vivid, they delve deeply into the complex relationships between the natural, human, and spiritual worlds. . . . We are reminded of the limitation and dangers of our often self-defeating intellectual powers.鈥濃擩ane Mead, judge, 2012 海角乱伦社区Poetry Prize contest
鈥淭hese fierce poems form a Darwinian compendium with speakers who empathically merge with everything feathered and furred. There鈥檚 an odd democracy here. The fresco swan on the Pompeii wall and the clamp of a falcon digging its talons into a glove both speak equally of mystery, fragility, and the future we stand to lose when we turn our backs on nature: 鈥楾he weight of this / is more than you imagined.鈥 These poems have a Keatsian beauty to them, and a Keatsian truth. In other words, everything we need to know.鈥濃擬ary Jo Bang
2012 海角乱伦社区Poetry Prize
