Nervous System
Poems
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A moving and kinetic collection of poetry from the 2018 winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Monica Youn
Unexpected, unusual, and stirring, the poetry of Rosalie Moffett “takes us to the brink of a world continually unmaking itself,” (Georgia Review). From diving-bell spiders to the nervous system of the human body, from trees growing so heavy with fruit that they split to dogs galloping through snowy hills, Moffett’s world is rendered with precision, intricacy, and extraordinary beauty.
Exhilarating in its technical expertise but also steeped in a profound connection to the natural world and the human psyche, Nervous System is a collection from a major emerging voice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Winner of the National Poetry Series, the contemplative second book from Moffett (June in Eden) sifts through one pivotal event the poet's mother's brain injury after a fall and how its repercussions rippled across the years that followed. Conscientiously associative, the poem features recurring symbols that represent the event, most significantly the spider, whose web is like the nerves of the brain, "a meshwork of silk rope bridges." Other themes include vegetation, light and vision set against dark and blindness (she describes her mother as "the one who once shielded me in her body like a lit match"), and memory and dreams. Moffett's cadence is effortlessly elegant; even her description of head trauma is achingly beautiful: "This, with/ a ringing like what, when shaken, the dead/ lightbulb makes." Though never morose, the book is suffused with grief as the poet mourns a piece of her mother that is gone and uses that experience to prepare for a later, more final grief, whenever it may come: "the me who's been/ smoothing a spot in my mind for years, like a dog/ turning in circles." Moffett creates order out of the chaos in this radiant collection, cataloging the known and unknown into a coherent story for both the reader and herself.
