How should we raise our children in, and for, a world that is burning? Rachel Richardson's third collection, Smother, interrogates this impossible question. The poet, raising young daughters and grieving the death of a mother friend, documents a string of record-breaking fires across the California landscape and the rage, sorrow, and detachment that follow amidst the pervasive smoke. Environmental and physical predation-on the earth and on the female body-weave through the book in layers.

But these are not poems of giving up. The poems in Smother gather accomplices in grief and mothering, seek out guides and girlfriends, remember the dead, keep watch at the firebreaks, and plant new trees on the burn scars. From lyric forms to moments of prose and documentary collage, these poems sing their song of resistance made from the music that is available to us now.

"Within that vast

triangle, land that appears

to be hanging only by a flimsy hinge

to the continent, the burn scars

having leveled the grasses, having pushed

the elk elsewhere up the ragged edge

for reeds, the hearts of some downed trees

still smolder. This is what I go for. To walk inside it,

to know what remains of the kingdom."

-from "The Map Is Not The Territory"

About the Author
Rachel Richardson is the author of two other poetry collections, Copperhead and Hundred-Year Wave. She is the cofounder of Left Margin LIT and a winner of the Hopwood Award, as well as a former Stegner and NEA Fellow. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Reviews
"Rachel Richardson's Smother stares down death, wildfires, a pandemic, and never once flinches. In wanting to 'stand inside the fog . . . [a]nd then to become the fog,' Richardson's enveloping, and defiant, voice rolls across these pages with authority. In a world on fire and dying of thirst, this book will revive you and make you want to believe in hope again." -- Tomas Q. Morin, author of Machete
"These poems were made at the nexus where the difficult, often thankless, faith-heavy job of artist meets the difficult, often thankless, faith-heavy job of mother: Rachel Richardson, with full heart, soul, and mind, bears witness as the world-literally and figuratively-burns around her and her children. Without the luxury of nihilism, she resists looking away, makes hope from scratch, and sings. Smother is a guide, a dare, a prayer, and a miracle." -- Carrie Fountain, author of I'm Not Missing
"How harrowing, how moving, how oddly comforting to read these casually masterful poems. No matter how great the fear, this poet finds the courage to make poetry within, and out of, the great perils of our time. Richardson keeps speaking, and breathing, in that necessary and singular record, poetry." -- Matthew Zapruder, author of Story of a Poem and I Love Hearing Your Dreams



Book Information
ISBN 9781324086109
Author Rachel Richardson
Format Hardback
Page Count 128
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co