“Meredith Stricker begins this urgent, gorgeous collection with the open question, ‘I don’t know if redemption is possible, something/ inside us like flowering, a kind of leakage.’ Her journey to answers brings us through bones and burns, bees and buffalo, Rilke and Stein, dark matter and ashes, to unflinchingly explore what we have done to the world through violence, commodification, and greed while also illuminating what might yet be possible, even in places of profound devastation. Striker’s careful attention draws us to look deeply, forcing us to see both our complicity in horrors and the beauty in even irrigation ditches, ultimately illuminating the possibility of renewal, of ‘burning with animals and greenness.’ This necessary collection is both alarm and balm.”
—Ruth Dickey, Mud Blooms, Winner of a Silver Nautilus for Books that make a Better World

“The brilliance of this book lies in Stricker’s effortless fusion of so many genres— biography, lyric, essay, visual poetry—into a singular idiom while documenting her search for the Soul’s residence after unthinkable disaster. Her ethics are such that the beauty of the writing does not shield us from brutality, instead leading us always ‘further into the dark conveyance beyond imagination.’”
—Brian Teare, Doomstead Days, Winner of the Four Quartets Prize

“Stricker lets the page build with its own music, leaving you open to the next page being a completely different song. Ecstatic, caught in the lung as deeply as you can breathe, it is a meditation that will resonate throughout your day. You too will want Stricker’s poems in your life.”
—CA Conrad, Gloria Anzaldúa prize