To poems selected from Margaret Gibson’s five previous volumes, Earth Elegy adds a book-length collection of new verse. Together they trace the workings of a sensibility that focuses emotional intensity like light through a magnifying glass, bringing its subjects alive in blazes of almost unbearable clarity.

Earth Elegy, writes Carolyn Forche,
partakes of Rilke’s apprehension of poetry as ‘the natural prayer of the human soul,’ issuing from a radiant knowledge of the radical contingency of all life, in the precariousness of its presence and futurity. These are requia of resistance, reminding us that life itself, our sojourn on earth, is the deepest spiritual practice.

Earth Elegy demonstrates Gibson’s mastery and powerful reach. Here is a body of work richly rooted in meditative solitude and social struggle, compassionate in its belief in human dignity, passionate in its exploration of the dynamics of radiance and grief in our psychic and social lives.