Dimensions
147 x 218 x 13mm
Rash yet tender, chastened yet lush, Headwaters is a book of opposites, a book of wild abandon by one of the most formally exacting poets of our time. Animals populate its pages--owl, groundhog, fox, each with its own inimitable survival skills--and the poet who so meticulously observes their behaviors has accumulated a lifetime's worth of skills herself: she too has survived.
The power of these extraordinary poems lies in their recognition that all our experience is ultimately useless--that human beings are at every moment beginners, facing the earth as if for the first time. "Don't you think I'm doing better," asks the first poem. "You go
t sick you got well you got sick," says the last. Eschewing punctuation, forgoing every symmetry, the poems hurl themselves forward, driven by an urgent need to speak. Headwaters is a book of wisdom that refuses to be wise, a book of fresh beginnings by an American poet writing at the height of her powers.
