Red Ocher

Finalist, 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Prize

In Jessica Poli’s Red Ocher, the wild mortality of the natural world merges with melancholic expressions of romantic loss: a lamb runt dies in the night, a first-time lover inflicts casual cruelties, brussels sprouts rot in a field, love goes quietly and unbearably unrequited. This is an ecopoetics that explores the cyclical natures of love and grief, mindful that “there will be room for desire / again, even after it leaves / like a flood receding, / the damaged farmhouses / and washed-away bridges / lying scattered the next day / amid silt and debris.” Throughout, Poli’s poems hold space for the sacred-finding it in woods overgrown with thorny weeds, in drunken joy rides down rural roads, and in the red ocher barns that haunt the author’s physical and emotional landscapes.

Author: Jessica Poli
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Published: 03/01/2023
Series: Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Pages: 68
Weight: 0.3lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.90w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9781682262290
Language: English