Earth - Paperback

by Cecilia Woloch (Author)

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

Author Biography

Cecilia Woloch is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Carpathia (BOA Editions 2009). The French translation of her second book, Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem, was published as Tzigane: le poeme gitane by Scribe-l'Harmattan in 2014. Tsigan has also been adapted for multi-media performances in the U.S. and Europe. Her novella, Sur la Route, a finalist for the Colony Collapse Prize, is forthcoming from Quale Press in 2015. Other literary honors include The Indiana Review Prize for Poetry, The New Ohio Review Prize for Poetry, the Scott Russell Sanders Prize for Creative Nonfiction, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, CEC/ArtsLink International, Chateau de la Napoule Foundation, the Center for International Theatre Development and many others. She collaborates regularly with musicians, dancers, visual artists, theatre artists and filmmakers. The founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and The Paris Poetry Workshop, she has also served on the faculties of a number of creative writing programs and teaches independently throughout the U.S. and around the world.