geode

First serial: New York Times Magazine (January 12, 2020)

A searching, timely ode to the earth.

A New England Book Award Finalist. “Rich with shining interiors and tactile relationships, delicate human to delicate earth...Poems acting as guides, helping us navigate and remember...”—New York Times Magazine

Susan Barba’s collection of poems resembles the spheroid stone of its name; when cracked open, a glittering and fascinating crystalline structure is revealed but the stony sphere she offers us, and the beauty within, is nothing less than the earth.

The word “geode” also houses within it “ode,” a praise poem. With both anguish and exaltation, Barba considers our time within the larger scale of deep-time. The species decreasing in number and disappeared and the possibility of human extinction haunt this book, while new generations and the possibility of renunciation of our old ways animate it. There is wonder here as well. She writes...

Oak, whose girth
exceeds my reach
forever I am
at your feet,
looking up.

Here is the world, Barba reminds us, like a ball, in our hands. Poems include “Earthwards,” “Letter from Gaia,” “River,” and “Final Letter of Stone.” geode is for anyone who loves poetry’s uniquely precise and enduring power.