Burnt Mountain

by Emily Wilson

Since her first collection, The Keep, Emily Wilson has forged a singular voice in American poetry, one that traces and complicates the dynamic relationships between language and the natural, aesthetics and science, material forms and inwardness. Her new collection, Burnt Mountain, is set on the rugged slopes of an inauspicious mountain, densely wooded, long ago scoured by fire, and marked by generations of human presence. Fiercely attuned to the match and mismatch between mind and mountain—the ways in which the natural and the human construct and deconstruct each other in the contested realms of art, wilderness, history, devotion, and politics—Wilson’s poetics reckon with resistant forces of nature and with the human drive to subdue what eludes us. Above all, these poems encounter the flickering, flowing matrices of being—“that far-forged interior / Outlandish green and flaming cause unknown”—and give voice to the elemental question of what can and cannot be known or understood—and what can sustain us.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published October 21, 2025

About the author

Emily R. Wilson (b. 1971) is a Professor in the Department of Classical Studies and Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. She has a BA from Oxford in Classics, an M. Phil., also from Oxford, in English Literature (1500-1660), and a Ph.D. from Yale in Classics and Comparative Literature. Her first book was Mocked with Death: Tragic overliving from Sophocles to Milton (Johns Hopkins, 2004). Her second book was The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint (Harvard UP 2007). Her third was "Seneca: A Life" (also published in the US as "The Greatest Empire": Penguin/ OUP USA, 2015). She has published verse translations of Seneca's tragedies (Oxford World's Classics), Euripides ("The Greek Plays", Modern Library Random House), and The Odyssey (Norton, fall 2017). Other publications include various chapters and articles on the reception of classical literature in English literature, and reviews in the TLS and LRB. She is the classics editor for the revised Norton Anthology of World Literature, and Western Literature.

Reviews

[Miree Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and University of Iowa Press for access to this volume of poetry.

Rarely have I come across poetry that speaks to my interior world, something that yearns for precise language and the sublime of the natural world. Every line feels like an incantation, a chant.

The Grade is, perhaps my favourite work in the collection. What cements me as a further fan of Emily Wilson, but I was sold long before I finished the first poem. The world needs more poetry of this ilk. It’s return to nature in a fresh dialogue. Where poetry of this era is political and enmeshed in the reordering of our contemporary suffering- Burnt Mountain lets us exit into an ethereal landing. Brief, but so entirely necessary.

This volume is also an exercise in learning- new terms, new names of nature, making them magical and rhythmic. Interposed with the sensation of aloof recognition of the transported world of Burnt Mountain. I think it rare to make something so scientific and biologically driven into something honest instead of haughty.

A pleasure to be allowed early access to read. I cannot fathom a world without this work.

[Anastey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley, University of Iowa Press, and Emily Wilson for sending me this advanced review copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This was a lovely little lyrical romp through the woods. There were poems about so many different kinds of plants! It feels like a community, growing and working with each other to thrive. Even a broken rock can be important for the moss growing on it. So beautiful, and a nice cozy read to curl up with on a rainy day.

[Seher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, an interesting read and one I will probably have to come back to when I get a paperback and can take notes on that. Didn’t realise for a minute that I was reading the same Emily Wilson who is so highly regarded with respect to her translations.

Very good for people who know a bit about nature; I know very little about plans, especially ferns. I really do love parts of Nine Block (Autumn)!

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review this!

[Sweetmusicwoman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book. First of all, three stars means I liked it. For some three stars isn’t good. But for my ratings it is. This was unique. I do not usually read poetry like it. I liked that it was unique and different for me. I am grateful to have read it.

[Tarredion · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to University of Iowa Press and Netgalley for this e-ARC. This is an honest review and all opinions in it are my own.

3.5 stars

This? This lively little collection, ok? Honestly? What can I say lol

I liked it

Mostly short poems, which made it easy to digest, despite the complex diction and twisty sentences, short lines, enjambment, occasional lack of punctuation. I thought I caught its essence by the end of one poem, and then the next line'd rebel, run off in a totally different direction - though still clutching the same nature-based, lush imagery. I just loved when it struck me with something different, something gorgeously described! And when it personified, or dropped these hints and clues, making me hunger for more. Used diction, again, some of it absolutely beautiful and surprising!!

Yet sometimes I felt myself reaching for a dictionary more often than felt natural, even for tricky poems - especially when each one is so short. Some unfinished sentences and possibly misspelled words confounded me. But in the opposite direction, it was some (I felt) overdone, grammatically strange sentences which made it occasionally feel, like, overworked, I guess? Or it'd fumble it on the last few lines by further complicating things, either thematically or grammatically or otherwise.

That's only a reason for why I didn't give this a higher rating. Still, I loved the whole reading experience (despite being ??? from time to time). Some of my fave-fave poems were:

Pastiche
The rain
Summer river
The pink
Little festival
Grassy loop
Plain & fancy

I loved the unique voice throughout (and it was mostly consistent) so I am excited to try something by Wilson again that I hopefully can crave and rave on and chomp through

Just eat up all the words lol x

[Nicole Perkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emily Wilson's poems make me want to sit outside and just listen: to the bees, crickets, birds. I want to hear plants grow and feel the sun. Her work is E. E. Cummings-esque: "The ferns are rising off their fern-stitched stems/ bowling outward sprigged spirals/ into those turns in the rivers/ tumbled ramps and slot slopes..." I love how she plays with words. Wilson invites readers to follow mythic beings along hidden forest paths; the poem "Burnt Mountain" brought to mind Disney's beautiful imagining of Igor Stravinsky's "Firebird" in the 2000 Fantasia sequel (watch it for just that one scene, it's stunning). "Summer Rain" meanders in a fashion as sinuous as the body of water it glorifies; in "Poplars" she writes, "[...] the times being what/ not even poplars under/ stand, the sun the wind/ through ragged-ravaged/ leaves, the flagrant service/ wanted in us," bringing to mind Dickinson's intangible imagery. "Deplorables" reads like a prayer to nature, speaking of the "Beastly embroideries" of ferns growing amid bracken.
This is the kind of poetry I want to write, overflowing with imagery that enchants your senses and pulls you into the vision of the poet. I don't know if I will ever achieve this, but Emily Wilson definitely has.