Earth

Winner of the 2014 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize (judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil), Earth is the sixth book by poet Cecilia Woloch. Praise for Earth: In Earth, Cecilia Woloch writes with the wonder and resilience that are essential, not only to empathy, but to transformation. Woloch weds us to the natural world through language that is both straightforward and particular. A “river’s lifting dress” comes to represent history; branches swaying “like the arms of a woman waving goodbye” come to represent mortality. These remarkable poems are hymns and requiems; they are made of "blood mixed with earth." —Terrance Hayes These poems reflect a mature writer, a woman unflinching in both love and craft. The love is unabashed; the language boldly lyrical and image-rich. As a devoted reader of Cecilia Woloch's writing, I relish anything she offers, so I welcome Earth, this book of passionate, vigorous poetry, in which grandeur of spirit always redeems sorrow. As Woloch writes in the gorgeous prose poem "Afterlife": "I want to be fierce and joyful and a meadow when I'm dead." May we all be meadows with you, Dear Poet. —Holly Prado These poems gel together beautifully with a musical sense of foreboding and epiphany inhabiting the lines. These pages give us a terrain where a "honey of birdcall in our mouth" seems equally at place with a landscape populated with a willow that leaves the speaker "half afraid that the tree would fly." I want to return to Earth again and again. —Aimee Nezhukumatathil