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Fordham University Press, April 2016 Winner of The Poets Out Loud Prize In this, her second collection of poetry, Nancy K. Pearson explores the possibilities of recovery and transformation in a world where “words cease to matter.” The speaker attempts to reconcile the past—a past shadowed by depression, addiction, and misdiagnosis. Pearson refuses to end in a place of relief, asking, “[D]on’t we all / fall into aggregate darkness / for something?” Instead, her poems meditate on the lyric of absence and fragmentation. Pearson’s poems are restless, unsettling, and revelatory. Order at Fordhampress.com, local bookstores and online bookstores |
"Not only one poem but the whole of Nancy K. Pearson’s breathtaking second book, The Whole by Contemplation of a Single Bone, presses the question 'Do you understand the urgency?' Urgency hums through this collection like current through an electric fence."—H.L. Hix
"So wondrous and happily strange that I had to take breaks in my reading of it to make sure that everything I thought I knew was still the way I remembered it. This is, in the best way, a book about what it means to be surprised."—Michael Klein
"Inspired by—among other things—recovery, family, a wildflower manual, and an oral history, Nancy K. Pearson’s The Whole By Contemplation of a Single Bone turns on the axis of the poet’s mind to catch and examine the power within the smallest detail. From its opening couplet—“I asked James, / can you feel you’re dying?”—this collection never stops heating up. The power of Pearson’s clearly rendered scenes echoes the larger narrative that emerges: a lost mother, a homecoming, "running long distances," “coming down kicking the oxy / for good." —Jill S. McDonough
"Not only one poem but the whole of Nancy K. Pearson’s breathtaking second book, The Whole by Contemplation of a Single Bone, presses the question 'Do you understand the urgency?' Urgency hums through this collection like current through an electric fence."—H.L. Hix
"So wondrous and happily strange that I had to take breaks in my reading of it to make sure that everything I thought I knew was still the way I remembered it. This is, in the best way, a book about what it means to be surprised."—Michael Klein
"Inspired by—among other things—recovery, family, a wildflower manual, and an oral history, Nancy K. Pearson’s The Whole By Contemplation of a Single Bone turns on the axis of the poet’s mind to catch and examine the power within the smallest detail. From its opening couplet—“I asked James, / can you feel you’re dying?”—this collection never stops heating up. The power of Pearson’s clearly rendered scenes echoes the larger narrative that emerges: a lost mother, a homecoming, "running long distances," “coming down kicking the oxy / for good." —Jill S. McDonough
TWO MINUTES OF LIGHT Perugia Press, 2008
WINNER OF THE L.L. WINSHIP/PEN NEW ENGLAND AWARD “In Two Minutes of Light, Nancy K. Pearson invents visceral, exciting language to enact redemption with stunning clarity. In Pearson’s world, there is no sentimentality to redemption, no fear of the negative. She doesn’t let absolutes do the work. As with Dante, the voice changes as it travels from hell to the scary possibility of happiness. But there’s no urge to create a model, a template for behavior. Pearson works in the moment, with a keen ear and a live, fluid line. I think of the Arab poet who said he would not trade his moment of mortality for God’s omniscience. Two Minutes of Light is a dazzling voyage.” —D. Nurske (PEN Award Ceremony) “Nancy Pearson’s poems are rife with the urgencies of constructing a self. It is a harrowing, hard-fought project. As one poem asks, ‘ By what small margins do we survive? ’ This is a book fiercely in love with the world, a book that unflinchingly examines what can keep someone from inhabiting that world, whole. Two Minutes of Light is a startling, luminous, and moving first collection." —Kim Addonizio “These poems remind me of collecting stones while walking, each one leading the way to a house in the forest. I want to say they spell redemption, but the forest has its own kind of talking and what’s extraordinary about this extraordinary book is how that world — tree, insect, rain, fish, flower, bird — has its saying and song too. I’ve never seen the world of human trauma and recovery set in what we call ‘the natural world,’ mediated by the human gaze, yes, and so blessedly indifferent to us. I read this book over and over again." — Marie Howe |
Order at Perugia Press, and local and online bookstores
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Ed. Melissa Tuckey. "Ghost Fishing is the first anthology to focus solely on poetry with an eco-justice bent. A culturally diverse collection entering a field where nature poetry anthologies have historically lacked diversity, this book presents a rich terrain of contemporary environmental poetry with roots in many cultural traditions."