Earth Again

by Chris Dombrowski

The second full-length collection from award-winning poet Chris Dombrowski, Earth Again transports readers to an imaginative world where identity is explored and expanded. With a mixture of long poems and shorter pieces, Dombrowski probes birth, death, sex, memory, and our blessed but treacherous engagement with the natural world. While he writes from a number of points of view and employs both male and female speakers, much of the collection's singular insight centers around masculine identity and being a husband and a father. Readers come away transformed, "like the land / gasping as it does each late winter evening when / the sky at tree line, nearly sapphiric, goes black," as these poems prove Dombrowski to be a truly original American voice.

Comprised of three sections—each of which concludes with a long poem—Earth Again presents a range of narrative and emotions in dexterous rhythms, unexpected shifts, and unforgettable metaphors. Dombrowksi introduces readers to arresting images like "the parataxis of her ass," "cerulean, alchemical light," "Molly with the sun in her mouth," and "labyrinthine, lanky-stemmed, dew-magnified" leaves. These details combine with Dombrowski's note-perfect language, which alternates between the most colloquial and the most elevated of diction. Readers will be challenged to consider spirituality alongside Scooby-Doo Band-aids, and to meditate on death after the mower has chews up a plastic dinosaur, as Dombrowski revels in exploring our connection to the environment and one another.

Fans of Dombrowski's previous collection, By Cold Water (which was noted as a contemporary poetry bestseller by the Poetry Foundation in 2009), along with other poets and poetry lovers will appreciate the attention to detail and the imaginative intensity of the poems in Earth Again.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2013

Reviews

[Sheryl Noethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book beats all! Dombrowski's experiences with the natural world make this collection of poems
breathtakingly immediate in awareness of the lives of birds and beasts living beside us, unnoticed.
The poems are filled with compassion, truth, erotica, and the presence of a mind observing the details of the Earth, again and again. Sometimes abstract, often so realistic the heart aches.

[Michael Schanhals · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling images and thoughts worth coming back to. This will be a go-to for me. Great stuff.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A freckle like a photo is a text the light's helped write..."- Naive Melody
"He know death was a winds searching the back of his hand, veins branching like his childhood sycamore leafed out in liver spots, the trunk, its scaly bark, too steep for memory to climb."Naive Melody
"Dusk-cast shadow, he died where he was made.
A bite of heart sustains but is not him." -Sustenance
4.5 stars. I think I found my new favorite poet. Or at least one to add to my collection of favorites. Poetry that I like and enjoy, for me, is hard to find. I was so surprised and happy that I found a poetry book that I really enjoyed and savored. This book made me feel. I smiled. I teared up. I also laughed. I love the way that Chris Dombrowski has a way with words. He is descriptive, vivid, and creates these images in your mind that have a lasting impact. I recommend this book to anyone who loves poetry that deals with imagery of nature and makes you think. I really wished that I could go back and read some of this poetry again and again, but I have to return this to the school library soon. So maybe next time. Many of this poetry deserves re-reading. I didn't understand some of his poetry, but that didn't take away from the fact that I enjoyed it all overall. I really wanted to fill this review with quotes, but it would probably consist of the entire book and I feel that the quotes I choose might not do it justice to how the whole thing was just deep and powerful and beautiful and mesmerizing and impactful.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dombrowski writes some of the finest nature lyrics around. He deserves a wider audience, but doesn't want to leave the river to get it. I'll do what I can to get the books out there. Here's a paragraph I did on him (with another on his former teacher) and this book from a few years back:

https://annarborobserver.com/articles...

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a completely random impulse buy at the Ann Arbor book festival, so I was pleasantly surprised to love this book as much as I did. The effect was cumulative, and I found myself liking it more and more with each poem that I read. The title of this book is perfect, as it is concerned with earth, and the earthiness of our bodies, which come from earth and will be earth again.

Some favorite lines--

...Day-thawed, the snow on black branches seizes up,
ensheathing the bare trees turned grand chandeliers dimmed low

-----------

I can only wish him
more earth, in the bluntest of terms: another stolen swig of whiskey
brief as a July snow, another hard tumble on his board, another
fuck, another hummingbird.

----------

snowsuits steaming up the window whose frame
bled groggy ladybugs, droplets from unseen veins

Largely the poems that moved me most were poems about parenting, some of the best writing I've seen on the subject, certainly the best poetry.

Wonderful.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting, beautiful, necessary. These are poems to keep the heart honest and the eyes true. By turns erotic and death-filled, Earth Again pays particular attention to the natural world, familial relations, the mind at work and play in the ferment of living. There's a moral vision in this work and it reminds us what matters, which includes the most nascent human life, whippoorwills, aspens.

I'll take away moments like this:

"Will you forgive me?" / was a phrase stricken from our language—/ theirs too, "they" ballooning to include nearly everyone but that arcane term/ "us."


There's a special power in reading these poems as body of work: in order, all of them, a true book as opposed to individual hits. I read it over the course of two days, then read it again before I put it down.