Genius Loci

Description

From a poet and essayist whose writing about nature has won her comparisons with Gary Snyder and Terry Tempest Williams comes a new collection that offers further evidence of her ability to trace the intersections of the human and nonhuman worlds. The title poem is a lyrical excavation of the city of Prague, where layers of history, culture and nature have accumulated to form “a genius loci”—a guardian spirit.Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of two volumes of poetry and three nonfiction books. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, Sierra Magazine, and The Norton Book of Nature Writing. Her honors include two fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, a Pushcart Prize and the Gertrude B. Clayton Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona.Return to a place where nothing in particular can be seen
to explain why you return, nothing you can name,
though you can touch the memory of the landscape—

linden trees in a hedgerow, cut wheatfield, ruins of the
longhouse,
rolling meadow of sunflowers blooming, the musk of
their oil, 
contained heat.

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