The Seeds

by Cecily Parks

The Seeds confronts the ecological paradox of homemaking in an environment domesticity rejects—one of mess, disease, and everyday violence—to explore the equal distress and delight entangled in caring for a family, a new home, and the earth that sustains them.


Cecily Parks draws on literary sources ranging from nursery rhymes to The Odyssey to examine how we form relationships with the natural world. The lessons of these poems are in processes that underscore humanity's power to alter nature and powerlessness to control an epiphyte's fall from a live oak, an urban creek's response to drought, or a roof rat's nest-building in the attic of the poet's home. Motherhood positions the speaker to revisit her girlhood relation to the earth, and as her two young daughters exemplify the ease with which children can become nature's intimates, the speaker must confront the ecological disturbances that arise from her own attempts to prevent upset to the garden through aggression by weeds, animals, and weather.


The Seeds deconstructs what it means to love nature, especially when the natural world challenges our desires for beauty, abundance, and safety. Looking to more-than-human guides with an open mind and heart, Parks' third book is a collection of unconventional contemporary environmental histories, in which places become biological and emotional primers for those who will inherit them.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Short Stories

100 pages, Paperback

Published October 14, 2025

Reviews

[Wei Tchou · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished reading The Seeds with a sick baby sleeping peacefully on my chest finally far enough into postpartum to look back and reflect on the fields, alleyways, lakes, sidewalk weeds, and trees I've passed through to find myself back "here," which is weirdly also where this book of poems is? I was happy to feel very deeply: "Motherhood as water or bed, motherhood as the event or the shape it left?" The story of the disappearing Gabusia, a ring of petals "because I touched the yellow flower / I suspected of being dead," "Should I have known love / would make me vicious toward the people / I loved." Reading this was the experience of being able to look back on life at the same time you are living it.

[Emma Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spanning a decade of observation, rumination, and percolation, Cecily Parks has created poems of words condensed with meaning. The Seeds is a book of poetry that demonstrates how few yet voluminous words can unravel a host of vicarious sensory experiences. Every line penetrates the reader's consciousness with the quiet understanding of how we all live with the precariousness of both beautiful and jagged experiences of life and the world.

"A poet wants beauty–beautiful names, beautiful plants, beautiful scenes–but an environmentally minded poet, who knows that the nandina’s roots displace other plants in the surrounding soil, knows that uncomplicated beauty is tough to come by."

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favorite things about the collection:
- Exploring the relationship between natural themes and contemporary human experience
- Multiple lengths and styles of poetry including free verse and prose poetry

Less-than-favorite things about the collection:
- I felt the poetic style leaned further from metaphor and ambiguity than I tend to prefer in poetry, in favor of a more narrative, concrete style. That is 100% a personal preference and my attempt to understand why I didn't connect with this collection despite its obviously high quality.

[Kim Six · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely collection of poetry with observations about the natural world and what we lose when we are without it.

I enjoyed a few of the pieces more than others.. but much of the language was striking and beautiful.

My favorite lines in the whole book were from ‘Bougainvillea’:
Her dog may have wanted too much / to unbutton the flowers’ blouses/ with his wet nose

If you have ever seen a papery puffy bougainvillea flower then you can immediately picture a wet dog nose poking into the bright pink blooms.

So much is the work is this way. I really enjoyed it.

[Dora Prieto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such care and quiet devastation in this book's attention to inheritance, landscape, and ecological grief, unfolding with a patience that makes each image feel deeply rooted and earned... I will be returning to these poems for a long time.

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable read with really great specificity and sensory work. I thought the weaving of motherhood with neighborhood landscapes and also with myth was compelling!

[Carly Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an earthbound felt collection. Love "the rhyme" poems so, so much.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous. An absolutely stunning sense of place. Gorgeous reflections on cruelty, beauty, and nature both around and within us.

[Dina · Rating 4 out of 5]

day 3 of sealey challenge 2026. really comforting collection.

[Katie Kemple · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of poems. The opening and closing poems on the hackberry, a "trash tree" created nice bookends. In awe of Parks' very long poems, and how well they hold attention -- as well as the delightful (very short) "Rhyme" poems that open several sections. Parks makes me wish I knew these plants better. This book is a wonderful monument to the backyard, alleyways, and pastures of life.