FINALIST FOR THE KINGSLEY TUFTS AWARD Meditative and richly written, this collection of Poems by Kathy Fagan takes the sycamore as its inspiration--and delivers precise, luminous insights on lost love, nature, and the process of recovery.
Spellbinding and ambitious--finding catharsis in wordplay and the humanity in nature-- Sycamore is an important new work from a writer whose Poems gleam like pearls or slowly burning stones (Philip Levine)..
Fluidly metaphorical; filled with references to film, sculpture, and architecture; and linguistically playful--Word games reveal a lot, says Fagan\'s speaker--these Poems unflinchingly lay bare both the poetic process and an emotional one.
And everywhere are sycamores, informed by Fagan\'s scientific and mythological research--shedding, growing tall, pale, and hollow enough to accommodate a person.
Cottonwood sends out feverish signals of pollen.
Black walnuts fall where no one can eat or smell them.
And so--like the abundance of summer diminishing to winter, and like the bark of the sycamore, which sheds to allow the tree\'s expansion--the speaker of these Poems documents a painful loss and tenuous rebirth, which take shape against a forested landscape.
It is the season of separation & falling / Away, Fagan writes.
FINALIST FOR THE KINGSLEY TUFTS AWARD Meditative and richly written, this collection of Poems by Kathy Fagan takes the sycamore as its inspiration--and delivers precise, luminous insights on lost love, nature, and the process of recovery
