Natural Forms, Poems by Dana Sonnenschein
In
Dana Sonnenschein's collection Natural Forms, nature is form,
and form is nature: the two are not only inseparable, they are indistinguishable.
The rich music and elegant shapes of her artfully composed verse immerse
the reader in the world, and the world in the reader.
Sample Poems by Dana Sonnenschein
"Dana Sonnenschein is a nature poet--but not in the usual post-romantic sense of that term. Rather than telling us about nature's effect on her, Sonnenschein's approach is more ancient and powerful. She drops her plumb line of words directly into her experience of nature, and nature comes to consciousness and meets her halfway. These shamanistic narrative dances of birds and children are forward-looking and contemporary; they raise energy."--Annie Finch
"Dana Sonnenschein's beautiful book could not be more aptly named: nature and form, form in nature and the nature of form are her passions and so her subjects. Subtly timed and tuned, her pilgrimages into wild places instruct her in beauty as 'a force that draws the body after it, like sex,' and her poems flow, like her mink, 'all sleek, unshadowed fur and muscle and purpose.' I find I can't stop quoting. Observing a rattlesnake, Sonnenschein learns 'to feel beyond fear something like praise,' and 'praise' is what I come to here for a collection that offers a generous handful--you'll find your own--of new, favorite poems."--David Hamilton
"In the lyric, meditative poems of Natural Forms, Sonnenschein records her uncanny kinship with animals of all kinds--swans, pigs, horses, possums, crows, turtles--and her encounters with them, which began in childhood and continue into the present. These are love poems, but of a different kind. Sonnenschein leaves behind the single (and generally human) object of desire, and instead traces her love for the multitude of species blinking back at her, and running from her, and flying above her, whenever she reenters the natural world. Her poetry combines a naturalist's curiosity and a painter's eye for detail, bringing to postmodern readers some taste of the amazement that Darwin and Audubon must have experienced, some feeling for the wild kingdom that encompasses and precedes our own. In one of the most moving poems in the collection, 'The Whitetail,' Sonnenschein writes, 'Sometimes when we need mercy,/we are given something to spare.' This is a fitting summary of her achievement in Natural Forms. It is a collection that revives our faith in nature, and in nature, love."--Brian Johnson
"This is a stunning book. When you enter Sonnenschein's fresh and unfamiliar world, you'll be impressed not only by the carefully crafted words, but also by the poet's imagination and feel for nature."--Marcia Southwick
"Natural Forms, a collection of poems devoted to the subject of American flora and fauna, is a masterful work....The beautifully sculpted poems, long and multi-part, formal and not, show a cool but reverent eye at work, and the disciplined skill that turns sight into breathtakingly precise notation."--Jean McGarry
"Deeply felt as prayers, Dana Sonnenschein's poems are meditations that teach us to respect ground we walk on. Poem after poem entices us with abundance of sensual particulars, from the 'mud-speckled clutch of the swan' to the 'hooked marks in bloody ice' that eagles leave by road-kill. Many poems in Natural Forms are elegies for the wildlife of this earth, but humor is also woven into the collection. What other poet has been given 'the look' by a snapping turtle she is trying to rescue from the center of the road? As in such moments of connection, grace comes in simple and unexpected ways: finding a horseshoe in gravel, picking it up knowing 'what a small gesture it takes/ to fill it with luck,' saving a possum trapped in a garbage can, or watching deer 'leap from lives gone flat as maps.' By standing still long enough to learn the language of geese, by giving a name to 'the hungers that bind us to a place,' these shimmering poems teach the spirit to see, to stay centered in order to rise, to worship."--Vivian Shipley
Dana Sonnenschein received her B.A. from the University of Iowa, her M.A. from The Writing Seminars, Johns Hopkins University, and her Ph.D. from Boston University. She is currently a professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven. Her first collection, Corvus, won the Quentin R. Howard chapbook contest and was published by Wind in spring 2003, and her second, No Angels But These, was chosen for Main Street Rag's Editor's Choice chapbook series (2005). Her poetry has appared in Amazing Stories, Appalachia, Calapooya, Cider Press Review, Connecticut Review, The Heartlands Today, The Iowa Review, The MacGuffin, Northwest Review, Seneca Review, Quarter After Eight, The Spoon River Poetry Review, West Branch, and elsewhere.
ISBN: 1933456507, 100 pages, $17.00