The Necessity of Wildfire: Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781949467789)

Winner of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award for poetryWinner of the Wren Poetry Prize selected by Ada Limacute;n, Caitlin Scarano's collection wrestles with family violence, escaping home, unraveling relationships, and the complexity of sexuality. The Necessity of Wildfire begins, "To not harm / each other is not enough. I want to love you / so much that you have no before." These poems chase a singular, thorny question: how does where and who we came from shape who and how we love? Judge Ada Lim says the resulting collection is "hungry, clear-eyed, tough, and generous."Scarano's imagination is galvanized by the South where she grew up and by the Pacific Northwest where she now resides-floods and wildfires, the Salish Sea and the North Cascades, and the humans and animals whose lives intersect and collide there. In this collection, Scarano reckons with a legacy of violence on both sides of their family, the death of their estranged father, the unraveling of long-term relationships, the complexity of their sexuality, and the decision not to have children. With fierce lyricality, these poems--"stories without monsters, / stories without morals"--resist both redemption and blame, yet call in mercy.

Author: Caitlin Scarano
ISBN-10: 1949467783
ISBN-13: 9781949467789
Publisher: Blair
Language: English
Published: 04/05/2022
Pages: 92
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.15lbs
Size: 6.80h x 4.90w x 0.30d

Review Citation(s):
Shelf Awareness 04/08/2022
Library Journal 05/01/2022 pg. 92