Earth Science

by Sarah Green

Poetry. The poems in EARTH SCIENCE, Sarah Green's debut collection, survey the whole terrain: wind, soil, atmosphere. Animal, vegetable, mineral. How the weather within us shifts with every phenomena that strikes. The stars above may never quite align, but we can trust Green's keen vision to tell us where all the best rocks are.

“With fluency and heart, the poems in Sarah Green’s Earth Science seem to say that beneath the surface of our common lives, our daily pleasures, nothing is stable, not family, nor the neighborhood, not the constellations, not even the sun a child was sure “stood still.” Love affairs, tragedy, even catastrophe, are simmering, most grippingly in the summer before the Boston Marathon bombing, when, in the poet’s lively Cambridge neighborhood The bombers were not bombers/yet, just brothers both younger than me, wrestling…/We were all very alive—/all of us and the brothers. (“Assembly”) I’m tremendously moved by the insight and appetite in this eloquent debut.”—Gail Mazur, author Forbidden City

Genres: Poetry

78 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2016

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Take a moment and think of an intimate conversation you had recently. Then, consider what you were really saying, what you truly learned. It’s not easy, but if there is a moment of clarity in that reflection then you have happened on the kind of moment that populates the pages of this book of poetry. Green is always a step and an image ahead, but remembers her role as a guide. There is enticement to follow.

As the poems progress, three stories seem to be woven into them: stories of the author as a person in relationships with other people, stories of the author as a person struggling to understand her power in this world, particularly I think her power as a woman, and stories of the mind detached from the person as an omniscient narrator with startling insight. In the poems these stories talk to one another, and I found myself delighted and grateful when they aligned for moments of clarity.

I had many favorites, but two in particular were Fate Factory, which imagines the three fates as real women (“will I always be here, bumper-to-bumper on manifesto bridge?”), and Hotel Winter, which grants the static images of night a familiar, unsettling need (“There is no wait in vain.”).

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earth Science was lovely and sad and full of tiny details that make up meaning in a life. I was surprised to feel neighborly with the author, she mentions triple-deckers and boys playing basketball but the shock is that she’s written about the Boston marathon bombers. Today we are worried about our neighbors in NY and NJ, but we still have to get on the train and go to work. I loved her poem, Findings—how she wrote of simple grace and sadness, and again in October Recovery, a kind of requiem. Beautiful.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO. MANY. TEARS. This book is raw and beautiful.

(I will say I'm a little bias because I know the poet personally; however, I honestly believe that I would have the same reaction had I not known her.)

[Homa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, delicate heft.