Description
Book SynopsisA masterful and moving new volume from a “peerless poet of the natural world” (
New York Times Book Review).
Trade Review"The craft of
Whale Fall defies. It asserts, for me, a definition of poetry: an unbearable gulf of feeling made indelible by form." -- Diane Seuss - Paris Review
"[Baker] locates his experiences in an understanding of the natural world that is both scientific and transcendent." -- Ron Charles - Washington Post Book Club
"Baker’s 12th volume of poetry finds him in a wistful, elegiac mood, paying witness to the shared frailties of the natural world and the aging, ailing speaker." -- New York Times Book Review
"One of the collection’s many achievements, however, is that [its] density of reference never lands heavily.
Whale Fall contains voices that fragment and shift pace, but never loses sight of a lyricism so reliable that it feels instinctual... In 2001, [Baker] wrote of 'the moral harmony of nature.'
Whale Fall might be the collection that refines and refinds that harmony for the Anthropocene, in which acid rain and microplastics and handholding in a tree are all part of the same music." -- Daniel Shailer - Los Angeles Review of Books
"From the shadow of the garfish to the memory of seabed in Ohio sandstone, nothing appears to be too slight or too immense for David Baker’s powers of lyric transformation. In book after eloquent book, his artistry has become more purely his own: pared down to essentials while refining its scope of generous inclusion. Baker’s method, like his subject, is the fine pulse of human encounter: here in its most distillate manifestation." -- Linda Gregerson
"As a book of ecopoetry, it could quickly slide into the merely catastrophic—because, these days, what else could it be?—but somehow, even as it elegizes, Baker’s
Whale Fall also cultivates our attention to the marvelous... [G]orgeous [and] mesmerizing." -- Chelsea Wagenaar - Plume
"
Whale Fall is divided into five numerated sections, notable for their variance, expansiveness, and sumptuous orchestration. I read this book as one absorbs a symphony, attending the lavish feast of sound and motion with its multiple instruments and silences. The poet knows his orchestra, and he brings every technique to bear on this composition." -- Alina Stefanescu - The Arts Fuse
"A virtuoso of eco-poetry and acoustics, Baker meditates on the nonpareil majesty of the planet with rigorous consideration and reverence... Baker’s careful, captivating writing sinks under the skin, summoning a long-forgotten need for stillness, wonder, and attention to the sacrosanctity of the world." -- Publishers Weekly
