Fallow Field

by Scott Edward Anderson

The long-awaited, full-length collection of poems by award-winning (Nebraska Review Award, Aldrich Emerging Poets Award) poet Scott Edward Anderson spans twenty-five years of his writing, including individual poems that have appeared in such publications as the American Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Anon, The Cortland Review, CrossConnect, Many Mountains Moving, and Terrain, among other publications.

Anderson brings to life on the page his deep engagement with the natural world -- and our human relationship with each other and our impact on the Earth -- in poetry that is both accessible and intellectually stimulating. With an acute attention to craft and a clarity of language, Anderson offers a book of poems that demonstrates the precision and range of his poetic vision.

"Scott Edward Anderson's poems honor the reality that the things of the world - rye grass, fall warblers, ravens, owls, 'Sargassum drifting/ in a pelagic wave,' lovers and sourdough bread - speak to and for our innerness. Here the sense of place is not simply a matter of geography, but of feeling one's way into that sense of becoming that makes one's path clear. The book's fourth section is comprised of poems that beautifully embrace the very human need to join the inner and outer, a territory defined, as the poem titles suggest, by 'Becoming,' 'Shapeshifting,' 'Cultivating,' 'Mapping,' and 'Healing.' Guided since childhood, as the book's closing long poem relates, by nature's teaching, Anderson is devoted to finding the words for what it means to dwell mindfully among others on the wounded earth." --Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Rope: Poems

"I was impressed by Anderson's engagement with nature -- especially the way in which his lyrical lines sketch the profound relationship between humans and their environment."
--Jonathan Galassi, author of Left-handed: Poems

Genres: Poetry

98 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 2013

About the author

Scott Edward Anderson is the author of AZOREAN SUITE/SUITE AÇORIANA (2020), FALLING UP: A Memoir of Second Chances (Homebound Publications, 2019), DWELLING: an ecopoem (Shanti Arts, 2018), FALLOW FIELD (Aldrich Press, 2013), and WALKS IN NATURE’S EMPIRE (Countryman Press, 1995). He has been a Concordia Fellow at the Millay Colony for the Arts and received the Nebraska Review Award. His poetry has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cimarron Review, The Cortland Review, The Wayfarer, and two anthologies. His essays and reviews have appeared in basalt, The Bloomsbury Review, Cleaver, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and elsewhere. For many years, he has worked in conservation, social enterprise, and clean energy consulting with such organizations as The Nature Conservancy, Ashoka, VerdeStrategy, and EY. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife, Samantha, and their blended family.

Visit him at scottedwardanderson.com