Trophic Cascade

“A soulful reckoning for our twenty-first century, held in focus through echoes of the past and future, but always firmly rooted in now.” —Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

Winner of the Colorado Book Award in Poetry (2018)

In this fourth book in a series of award-winning survival narratives, Dungy writes positioned at a fulcrum, bringing a new life into the world even as her elders are passing on. In a time of massive environmental degradation, violence and abuse of power, a world in which we all must survive, these poems resonate within and beyond the scope of the human realms, delicately balancing between conflicting loci of attention. Dwelling between vibrancy and its opposite, Dungy writes in a single poem about a mother, a daughter, Smokin’ Joe Frazier, brittle stars, giant boulders, and a dead blue whale. These poems are written in the face of despair to hold an impossible love and a commitment to hope. A readers companion will be available at wesleyan.edu/wespress/readerscompanions.

“Dungy asks how we can survive despair and finds her answers close to the earth.” —Diana Whitney, The Kenyon Review

“Trophic Cascade frequently bears witness—to violence, to loss, to environmental degradation—but for Dungy, witnessing entails hope.” —Julie Swarstad Johnson, Harvard Review Online

“Tension. Simmering. Beneath her matter-of-fact, easy-going, sit-yourself-down, let-me-tell-it-like-it-is clarifying. And her power we take deadly seriously.” —Matt Sutherland, Foreword Reviews

“[Trophic Cascade] asks us, in spite of the pain or difficulty of being human today, to find joy and vibrancy in our experiences.” —Elizabeth Flock, PBS Newshour