Companion Grasses

These adventurous poems search for answers about what it means to dwell in a particular place. Exploring the cities, coasts, forests, and mountains of Northern California and New England, the poems in this collection immerse themselves in the specifics of bioregion and microclimate, and take special note of the cycle of death and rebirth that plays out dramatically in California’s chaparral and grasslands. Inspired by Transcendentalism, Companion Grasses sees the sacred in the workings of the material world, but its indebtedness to the ecological tradition of California poets unearths evidence in the sensual materiality of words themselves. Creating ecologically rich landscapes and highly rhythmic inscapes, the poems set seasonal and human dramas side-by-side and assess their relationship.