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saralynnburnett's review
5.0
This poetry collection from Denton Loving is an absolute stunner. I will be revisiting these time and time again, dipping in and out for the moments of awe in here, of which there are many.
There’s a phenomenal scope between these pages—you see the details on the underside of a cow, a hummingbird’s throat, or the “soft daggers of falling petals” and then zoom out all the way to the stars and humanity at large. It’s brilliant in that these poems show how you can be rooted to one specific place, like in this case East Tennessee / Appalachia / a specific orchard or a barn, and are yet connected to a global whole as these poems draw inspiration and/or make references to Shakespeare, Japanese poetry structures, or memorial statues in Prague (LOVED the poem Genealogy which showed this connectedness idea perfectly and that I’m having a hard time explaining).
The beauty of loss permeates throughout the collection be it animals considering oblivion or ‘tamping’ the earth above your father’s grave or encountering his gloves after he has passed, “cupping air / as if he’ll return when he finds his hammer.”
This collection is SO BEAUTIFUL – I couldn’t get enough. Already rereading them all.
There’s a phenomenal scope between these pages—you see the details on the underside of a cow, a hummingbird’s throat, or the “soft daggers of falling petals” and then zoom out all the way to the stars and humanity at large. It’s brilliant in that these poems show how you can be rooted to one specific place, like in this case East Tennessee / Appalachia / a specific orchard or a barn, and are yet connected to a global whole as these poems draw inspiration and/or make references to Shakespeare, Japanese poetry structures, or memorial statues in Prague (LOVED the poem Genealogy which showed this connectedness idea perfectly and that I’m having a hard time explaining).
The beauty of loss permeates throughout the collection be it animals considering oblivion or ‘tamping’ the earth above your father’s grave or encountering his gloves after he has passed, “cupping air / as if he’ll return when he finds his hammer.”
This collection is SO BEAUTIFUL – I couldn’t get enough. Already rereading them all.
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