The Nine Senses

In this groundbreaking fourth collection comprised of exquisitely crafted prose poems, Melissa Kwasny examines the world around her with the quiet and profound attention of a poet at the height of her powers. The questions that have informed much of Kwasny’s previous work—how does one have a relationship with the natural world in our time? What can we learn about being human from non-human forms of life?—find a new urgency in The Nine Senses, as image collides with image to produce a singular ecological and poetic vision, one that is often dire and surreal. “Perhaps the extra four senses contribute to the surreal in the sense that Breton defined it—as resolution of the real and the dream,” Kwasny writes in the title poem. Thematically rich and varied, touching on mortality, temporality, and eternity, this collection puts Kwasny on the forefront of American poetry, and asks the reader: how do we tie ourselves to the world when our minds are always someplace other than where we are?