Red Ocher

By Jessica Poli

In Jessica Poli's Red Ocher, the wild mortality of the natural world merges with melancholic expressions of romantic loss: a lamb runt dies in the night, a first-time lover inflicts casual cruelties, brussels sprouts rot in a field, love goes quietly and unbearably unrequited. This is an ecopoetics that explores the cyclical natures of love and grief, mindful that "there will be room for desire / again, even after it leaves / like a flood receding, / the damaged farmhouses / and washed-away bridges / lying scattered the next day / amid silt and debris." Throughout, Poli's poems hold space for the sacred-finding it in woods overgrown with thorny weeds, in drunken joy rides down rural roads, and in the red ocher barns that haunt the author's physical and emotional landscapes.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1682262294
• ISBN13: 9781682262290
• Release Date: March 2023
• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Length: 68 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.9" x 8.3"