Full Description
A lyrical collection examines the quotidian beauty that surrounds us despite deep loss and climate crisis
The Way of the Earth is the fourth collection from award-winning poet Matthew Shenoda. In this, his most personal collection to date, he explores the temporal and fleeting nature of human life and the earth we inhabit. Through ruminations on the intersections of culture and ecology, the death of loved ones, and the growing inequities in our midst, Shenoda explores what it means to be a person both grounded to the earth and with a yearning beyond it. Memories of landscapes and histories echo throughout the sensations of the present: the sight of egrets wading in the marshes, the smell of the ocean, a child's hand nestled in a warm palm. "Time never goes back," Shenoda writes, "but the imagination must."
Contents
Prelude
I
Time
Glint
Sleep
Traces
Fire
To Be Carried By Air
Evolution
Loss
Still
Oil and Myrrh
Crossing Over
Midday Sun
The Edge is the End of the Beginning
II
Coastal
Succession
Local
Canto for Pasadena
In the Post-Conflict Nation
Our Returning
Song of the Dispersed
Thaw
Work
Who Feels It, Knows It
Wild
Unknowing
Glimpse
Seeing
Refuge
An Afternoon in July
Rock Head
The Unlearning
Revelation: Africa: Diaspora
Acknowledgements
