Overview
Winner of the 2022 Levis Reading Prize
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's 2021 John Leonard Prize for Best First Book
AĀ Publishers Weekly āTop Ten Pickā for Fall 2021 Poetry Titles
AĀ Library Journal āPoetry Title to Watchā for 2021
AĀ Chicago Review of BooksĀ āMust-Read Book of September 2021ā
Selected by Sally Keith as a winner of the 2020 National Poetry Series, this debut collection is a ruminative catalogue of overgrowth and the places that haunt us.
With Devon Walker-Figueroa as our Virgil, we begin in the collectionās eponymous town of Philomath, Oregon. We drift through the general store, into the Nazarene Church, past people plucking at the brambles of a place that wonāt let them go. We move beyond the town into fields and farmlandāand further still, along highways, into a cursed Californian town, a museum in Florence. We wander with a kind of animal logic, like a beast with āa mind to get loose / from a valley fallowing / towards foul,ā through the tense, overlapping space between movement and stillness.
An explorer at the edge of the sublime, Walker-Figueroa writes in quiet awe of nature, of memory, and of a beauty that is āmerelyĀ Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā existence carrying on and carrying on.ā In her wanderings, she guides readers toward a kind of witness that doesnāt flinch from the bleak or bizarre: A vineyard engulfed in flames is reclaimed by the fields. A sow smothers its young, then bears more. A neighbor chews locusts in his yard.
For inĀ Philomath, it is the poetās (sometimes reluctant) obligation āto keep an eye / on what is leftā of the people and places that have impacted us. And there is alwaysĀ somethingĀ left, whether it is the smell of burnt grapes, a twelfth-century bronze, or even a lock of hair.
This book title, Philomath (Poems), ISBN: 9781571315229, by Devon Walker-Figueroa, published by Milkweed Editions (September 14, 2021) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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