Dear Specimen: Poems
Dear Specimen: Poems
Herbert, W. J.
product information
Condition: New, UPC: 9780807007594, Publication Date: Fri, October 1, 2021, Type: Paperback ,
join & start selling
description
1A National Poetry Series winner, selected and with a foreword by Kwame Dawes.

A 5-part series of interwoven poems from a dying parent to her daughter, examining the human capacity for grief, culpability, and love, asking: do we as a species deserve to survive?

Dear Specimen opens with both its speaker and her planet in peril. In "Speak to Me," she puzzles over a millipede, as if the blue rune of its body could help her understand her impending death and the crisis her species has created. Throughout the collection, poems addressed to specimens echo the speaker's concern and amplify her wonderment. A catalog of our climate transgressions, Dear Specimen's final poem foretells a future in which climate refugees overrun one of our planet's last habitable places.

The collection's lifeblood is a series of poems in which the speaker and her daughter express their concern for, and devotion to, one another. The daughter's questions mirror the ones her mother asks of specimens: what are we meant to do with so much hazard and wonder? When the speaker hints at the climate crisis in a bedtime story she tells her grandson, we, too, feel the peril he may face.

Juxtaposing a profound sense of intimacy with the vastness of geological time, the collection offers a climate-conscious critique of the human species--our search for meaning and intimacy, our capacity for greed and destruction. Dear Specimen is an extended love letter and dire warning, not only to the daughter its speaker leaves behind but to all of us.

reviews

Be the first to write a review

member goods

No member items were found under this heading.

notems store

Gifts from a Feral Cat: ...

by Wilson, Tian

Paperback /Paperback

$14.83

God, Is My Loved One ...

by Klotz, L. J.

Hardcover /Hardcover

$16.49

The Gravity of Love

by Duren, Brian

Paperback /Paperback

$11.99

The Wet Hex

by Shin, Sun Yung

Paperback /Paperback

$12.71

listens & views

ON HOW LIFE IS / ...

by GRAY,MACY

COMPACT DISC

out of stock

$20.99

POOR MOON (HK)

by POOR MOON

COMPACT DISC

out of stock

$8.49

LIVE LIKE SAINTS

by GRASSADONIA,JOHN

COMPACT DISC

out of stock

$19.25

I'M YOURS

by GRAY,PASTOR ARTHUR AND HIGH PRAISE COMPANY

COMPACT DISC

out of stock

$15.75

Return Policy

All sales are final

Shipping

No special shipping considerations available.
Shipping fees determined at checkout.