In poems at once profound and accessible, Nadia Colburn finds splendor and astonishment in a natural world—and a human world—that is deeply troubled yet still majestically beautiful. Both elegy and celebration, I Say the Sky addresses some of the most challenging aspects of human existence, from childhood trauma to environmental devastation, and discovers, in unexpected and clear-sighted ways, wisdom, wonder, and peace.
Colburn's brilliant second book charts a journey to meet the self. From girlhood to parenthood, loss to discovery, in poems that sing, the book explores how meaning is made. Claiming the female voice from silence, the poems find their grounding in the body and achieve rootedness and hope.
I Say the Sky is a meditative and ultimately inspiring book that will be savored by seasoned readers as well as those new to poetry.
1143056478
I Say the Sky: Poems
In poems at once profound and accessible, Nadia Colburn finds splendor and astonishment in a natural world—and a human world—that is deeply troubled yet still majestically beautiful. Both elegy and celebration, I Say the Sky addresses some of the most challenging aspects of human existence, from childhood trauma to environmental devastation, and discovers, in unexpected and clear-sighted ways, wisdom, wonder, and peace.
Colburn's brilliant second book charts a journey to meet the self. From girlhood to parenthood, loss to discovery, in poems that sing, the book explores how meaning is made. Claiming the female voice from silence, the poems find their grounding in the body and achieve rootedness and hope.
I Say the Sky is a meditative and ultimately inspiring book that will be savored by seasoned readers as well as those new to poetry.
In poems at once profound and accessible, Nadia Colburn finds splendor and astonishment in a natural world—and a human world—that is deeply troubled yet still majestically beautiful. Both elegy and celebration, I Say the Sky addresses some of the most challenging aspects of human existence, from childhood trauma to environmental devastation, and discovers, in unexpected and clear-sighted ways, wisdom, wonder, and peace.
Colburn's brilliant second book charts a journey to meet the self. From girlhood to parenthood, loss to discovery, in poems that sing, the book explores how meaning is made. Claiming the female voice from silence, the poems find their grounding in the body and achieve rootedness and hope.
I Say the Sky is a meditative and ultimately inspiring book that will be savored by seasoned readers as well as those new to poetry.
Nadia Colburn is the author of The High Shelf, and her poetry and prose have appeared in more than eighty publications, including the New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Spirituality & Health, Lion's Roar, and the Yale Review. She holds a PhD in English from Columbia University and is the founder of Align Your Story Writing School, which brings traditional literary and creative writing studies together with mindfulness, embodied practices, and social and environmental engagement. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children. Find her at nadiacolburn.com, where she offers meditations and free resources for writers.
Table of Contents
Section 1 I Think It Is Such A Beautiful Upflying Smaller Even than Last Week The End of History Adulthood 4am Section 2 The Physical World Anxiety What We Are Taught Section 3 Memory And the Small Body Catalog of Beautiful Girls Stone Girl Sleeping Beauty Rage Know Knowing Reading to My Daughter Section 4 On My 43rd Birthday Summer Evening Hands Teach Me On the Shortest Day of the Year March Imaginary World My Throat Outside the Sparrows are Awake Section 5 Happiness 6pm Invocation Section 6 When Death Comes August Arrival Onion Today Like Yesterday Amid So Much Suffering, Do I Dare Be Happy? Midwinter Power May I Greet You Rain Pours off the Eaves of the House 12am You Postscript Acknowledgements