geode

by Susan Barba

Overview

A New England Book Award Finalist. “Rich with shining interiors and tactile relationships, delicate human to delicate earth...Poems acting as guides, helping us navigate and remember...”—New York Times Magazine

Susan Barba’s collection of poems resembles the spheroid stone of its name; when cracked open, a glittering and fascinating crystalline structure is revealed but the stony sphere she offers us, and the beauty within, is nothing less than the earth.

The word “geode” also houses within it “ode,” a praise poem. With both anguish and exaltation, Barba considers our time within the larger scale of deep-time. The species decreasing in number and disappeared and the possibility of human extinction haunt this book, while new generations and the possibility of renunciation of our old ways animate it. There is wonder here as well. She writes...

Oak, whose girth exceeds my reach forever I am at your feet,
looking up.

Here is the world, Barba reminds us, like a ball, in our hands. Poems include “Earthwards,” “Letter from Gaia,” “River,” and “Final Letter of Stone.” geode is for anyone who loves poetry’s uniquely precise and enduring power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781574232356
Publisher:	David R. Godine, Publisher
Publication date:	04/07/2020
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Susan Barba's first book Fair Sun (Godine, 2017) was awarded the Anahit Literary Prize and the Minas & Kohar Tölöyan Prize. She earned her PhD in comparative literature from Harvard Universityand is Senior Editor at New York Review Books.

Table of Contents

(Song) 13

Earthwards 14

x

Exhibit 1 17

Exhibit 2 18

Exhibit 3 19

Exhibit 4 20

Exhibit 5 21

Exhibit 6 22

Exhibit 7 23

Exhibit 8 24

Ore 25

y

Dispersal 37

Blank Placard Dance 39

The Pleistocene Today 40

As Old as Woe 41

Recoil 42

Brutta Figura 43

An Education 44

Letter from Gala 45

River 48

z

Bright Scrap 63

Dandelion 64

Current 65

Heirloom 66

Wide Margin Love Poem 67

Child, nine 68

Child, six 70

Retrospective, Agnes Martin 71

Micellae 72

I

The Minutes 83

Practice 84

Final Letter of Stone 85

Acknowledgments 91

What People are Saying About This

Ilya Kaminsky

With gorgeous incantations, with music that is as memorable as it is piercing, Susan Barba has given us the green-book, the earth-book, the book of justice, that shows us how endlessly, mindlessly "we are ticking away, all of us clocks."
GEODE maps our planet's "blue-green grid," shows us the earth itself, and our crime against it: "earth the story they're breaking." Not a story exactly, perhaps, but a spell, a book of spells.
From the language of maps, from the language of the courtroom, from the language of the river, we are given one human's testimony. And music, when it comes, is transformative: "Oak, whose girth / exceeds my reach / forever I am / at your feet, / looking up."

From the Publisher

With gorgeous incantations, with music that is as memorable as it is piercing, Susan Barba has given us the green-book, the earth-book, the book of justice, that shows us how endlessly, mindlessly "we are ticking away, all of us clocks." geode maps our planet's "blue-green grid", shows us the earth itself, and our crime against it: "earth the story they're breaking." Not a story exactly, perhaps, but a spell, a book of spells.

From the language of maps, from the language of the courtroom, from the language of the river, we are given one human's testimony. And music, when it comes, is transformative: "Oak, whose girth / exceeds my reach / forever I am / at your feet, / looking up."

— Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

Susan Barba’s geode is a rich, lyrical meditation on earth and its generative forces as well as its vulnerability to human desecration, violence, and ignorance. Her poems navigate places where natural history, human imagination and man-made endeavor meet. Barba’s voice is necessary in this tragic American moment where reactionary forces are at war with science, reason, and the planet.

—Peter Balakian, author of Ozone Journal

Tense and bright as a winter star, Susan Barba’s geode re-orients the senses around the sort of spiritual refreshment I thought we had relegated to nostalgia. Now, we need poems that help us survive our trouble and teach us not to lie—Barba’s brilliant “Letter to Gaia” is one of these, confronting us with love and despair in equal measure. Reading this book, we come to know again the lifespan of a river, the perishable joy of children, and the possibility of justice within the law. geode schools us in what the poet might call “prodigal beauty,” delicate reminders in the natural world that life continues in the midst of disintegration. I am amazed and delighted by the energy she finds, a liveliness that survives hope and despair, a sense of being that cannot be owned or bought—she has found it, and in this book, she insists on giving it away.

—Katie Peterson, author of A Piece of Good News