Genius Loci

by Alison Hawthorne Deming

Overview

From a poet and essayist whose writing about nature has won her comparisons with Gary Snyder and Terry Tempest Williams comes a new collection that offers further evidence of her ability to trace the intersections of the human and nonhuman worlds. The title poem is a lyrical excavation of the city of Prague, where layers of history, culture and nature have accumulated to form “a genius loci”—a guardian spirit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101007297
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/31/2005
Series:	Penguin Poets
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
File size:	156 KB

About the Author

Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of two volumes of poetry and three nonfiction books. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, Sierra Magazine, and The Norton Book of Nature Writing. Her honors include two fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, a Pushcart Prize and the Gertrude B. Clayton Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona.

Read an Excerpt

Return to a place where nothing in particular can be seen
to explain why you return, nothing you can name,
though you can touch the memory of the landscape—

linden trees in a hedgerow, cut wheatfield, ruins of the
longhouse,
rolling meadow of sunflowers blooming, the musk of
their oil, 
contained heat.

Editorial Reviews

In 1889, Paul Valery changed modern poetry by comparing the poet with the algebraist and the scientist, leaving rich notions for future poets to mine. Deming, a Walt Whitman Award winner for Science and Other Poems, has done Valery's prophecy justice in this third collection featuring a careful balance of scientific observation and lyrical invention. As she writes in the breathtaking poem "The Enigma We Answer by Living," people and creatures are "all playing the endgame of a beautiful planet/ that's made us want to name/ each thing and try to tell/ its story against the vanishing." Poetry lovers will be so grateful that she continues to gift them with her work. They will return to this book again and again for its clarity of vision, hope, and accuracy of observation. Recommended for all academic and public libraries.-Heidi Arnold, formerly with the American Theological Lib. Assn., Binghamton, NY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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