American Lotus

The wonderfully observational poems in Kevin Casey’s American Lotus remind us how separate we are from the natural world, how we sometimes suffer because of that estrangement, and offer us a way to bridge that divide. With a radical sympathy, poems like “Red Maple (Acer rubrum)” suggest that like this tree “felled weeks ago, plunging with a sigh/ as the earth rushed up to receive it” we too have been “trimmed from this life.” Once inside the rooms of these poems, deep images, sly rhythms and musicality reward close reading as in “Hancock Point, Early Autumn” where “Autumn is a bleached whelk chrysalis,/ a mermaid’s purse of brine and bone.” And yet, the “ripe and heavy” “game bags at our backs” in “Partridge Hunting” will likely break your heart.

—Nina Dellaria, Co-Founder & Editor of Bird’s Thumb