Synopses & Reviews
If you would learn the earth as it really is,” N. Scott Momaday writes, learn it through its sacred places.” With this quote as her guiding light, Melissa Kwasny traveled to the ancient pictograph and petroglyph sites around her rural Montana home. The poems in this collection emerge from these visits and capture the natural world she encounters around the sacred art, filling it with new, personal meaning: brief glimpses of starlight through the trees become a reminder of the impermanence of life, the controlled burn of a forest a sign of the changes associated with aging. Unlike traditional nature poets, however, Kwasny acknowledges the active spirit of each place, agreeing that, we make a sign and we receive.” Not only do we give meaning to nature, Kwasny suggests, but nature gives meaning to us. As the collection closes, the poems begin to coalesce into a singular pictograph, creating a fading language that might be a bridge to our existence here.”
Review
Praise for
Pictograph"These poems have brought me to my knees, a new catechism founded on the breath of ochre and stone. Among the careful script of the ancients, Melissa Kwasnys vision has superbly located what it means to be human. What it means to seek answers, to mark the passage of time, and to leave behind remnants of hope for those to come. Through these poems of cosmic examination, we are reminded again and again that we were here. And we remain."
M.L. Smoker
Praise for the Author
Melissa Kwasnys poems are so exact in their movement and presentation, so fresh in their botanical and observatory language . . . It is difficult for me to express my admiration and enthusiasm.”
Christopher Howell
Melissa Kwasny's work serves as a brilliant tonic, reminding us of the essential gravitas of poems of distinction."Albert Goldbarth
As nearly all our great poets tell us, it is by attending scrupulously to other that we best understand ourselves. So it is that in Melissa Kwasny's tender, brilliantly described encounters.”Patricia Goedicke
Synopsis
"An act of communion." --YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA
"If you would learn the earth as it really is," N. Scott Momaday writes, "learn it through its sacred places." With this quote as her guiding light, Melissa Kwasny traveled to the ancient pictograph and petroglyph sites around her rural Montana home.
The poems in this collection emerge from these visits and capture the natural world she encounters around the sacred art, filling it with new, personal meaning: brief glimpses of starlight through the trees become a reminder of the impermanence of life, the controlled burn of a forest a sign of the changes associated with aging. Unlike traditional nature poets, however, Kwasny acknowledges the active spirit of each place, agreeing that "we make a sign and we receive." Not only do we give meaning to nature, Kwasny suggests, but nature gives meaning to us. As the collection closes, the poems begin to coalesce into a singular pictograph, creating "a fading language that might be a bridge to our existence here."