Description
Book SynopsisFoxlogic, Fireweed follows a lyrical sequence of five physical and emotional terrains—floodplain, coast, desert, suburbia, mesa—braiding themes of nature, domesticity, isolation, and human relationships to recover a connectivity and wonder that seems drained from the screen-tick of daily life.
Trade Review"In her award-winning collection
Foxlogic, Fireweed, Jennifer Sweeney draws a portrait of a life firmly rooted in its physical and spiritual realms even while it revels in the liminal spaces that can’t always be explained with logic or reason."—Donna Vorreyer,
Rhino Poetry“The logic of
Foxlogic, Fireweed is human and humane; it’s the logic of a penetrative tenderness and an embodiment always on the verge of dispersing into fox, or deer, or rain. . . . These are not bandwagon poems. They don’t mug for the camera. Rather, they enact a love ‘sourced in loneliness’ where ‘with our little keys of witness’ we find each other—the very definition of the lyric poem.”—Diane Seuss
“In Jennifer K. Sweeney’s beautiful new collection, poems serve as altars for the fierce hearts and fairytales that center our lives. . . . These poems recognize how sacred attention can be. In
Foxlogic, Fireweed nothing escapes hiding and nothing escapes love.”—Traci Brimhall
“
Foxlogic, Fireweed is a torn map of a state where all words are proximate to mystery. Venturing into terra incognita, into territory that might be anima mundi, maybe, reader, you think you know the lineaments, but they are altered. Altared. Yes, to dream space, but wilder, wider—this metal into bird, stone into air, mother into vulpine. Sweeney is breathing strangeness into a small body of words, and the expanses open exponentially.”—Marsha de la O
“The poems in Jennifer K. Sweeney’s
Foxlogic, Fireweed do the hard work of ‘remaining in the perhaps.’ Sweeney walks the many fine lines between introspection and observation, speaking plainly and singing. She finds moments of awe in the everyday, urging us to ‘keep afraid what is fearful, hold what demands to be held.’”—Grace Bauer, author of
Mean/TimeTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
1 (whole flocks of rain) Letter from the Sound
I will break into my life for my life Bat Milk
Poem for My Son in the Car
Outside My Window Is a Window
Crickets, Vespers
Old Town Square
The Pear Trees at Terezín
Altar: Compass
Alpenhorn
Wildest
2 (I am driving a whale heart) Preface
I am driving a whale heart
Wind under the Skin
Picking Up My Wedding Dress
Variation on Bear and Moon
Jennifers of the 1970s
In the House of Seals
To Remain in Perhaps Every morning we boarded our little ship
The Somnambulist
3 (brighten the road, dear) Duet
When we were carnies
Still Life with Djembe and Black Widow
The Day Everywhere and White
Snake in the Zendo
Tree; Tremble Cul-de-sac
The Game of Life Landslide
Eclipse
The Snow Leopard Mother
4 (part fur part hollow) Foxlogic, Fireweed
Tinderbox
Making Use
Altar: Fairytale
A Deer Story
Still Life with Skeleton and Sight Word
Vigil
How Many Leaves and Boats Gather Together
Cabinet of Curiosities
What Turkeys Can Teach Us about Grief in Suburbia
5 (in a circular wind)bike shed will often show more results than
“bike shed” Antlers
For the brown widow who laid her eggs under my son’s bicycle seat
Altar: Aerial Heart
Pastoral
Our Laundry Room of Deflated Balloons
Meeting
Three-Handed Clock
Nacelle and Turn
Ceremony
Notes
