Geosmin

Description

The poems of Geosmin (the scent of soil) are celebration of the startling and shimmering earth, praising creatures of soil, sky, and in-between. Ecologist, farmer, mother, and poet Catherine Young honors land and what it means to be human in this world. Her poems journey through earth, water, tree, and stone, the heartbreak and beauty of seasons across a rural year, and take a panoramic view of aging. Young paints a deep map of Wisconsin’s Driftless region while evoking a place found within regions of the heart.

Praise for Geosmin

“Catherine Young writes from the heart and from the land, with the keen eye of a geologist and the soul of a poet. These are poems in the tradition of Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, and Louise Glück, poems that honor rural life and the earth itself, poems concerned with the soil, with water, with the changing seasons, and with language. In short, they grapple with what it means to be human and one part of this fragile and natural world.” — Christopher Chambers, editor Midwest Review

“Catherine Young’s animate collection of poetry breathes life into the mineral wildness of the Driftless region of Wisconsin. Part almanac, part field guide, and all love-song, these poems are baskets of earth-words that praise the wild world—the swallows, the trilobites, the fiddlehead ferns, the buzz-filled air. These deep-time poems make me heady with love.” — Janisse Ray, author of Red Lanterns

“Let us witness / the whirling embrace between / orb and ocean,” writes Catherine Young, who bears witness to the soil, the water and sky, and the amazing richness of a landscape and soulscape that is at once painfully beautiful and alluring and, at the same time, in sad decline. This is “the real America,” she says, “a place / where everyone can freely play together as everything crumbles.” Young is, I think, a fresh and invaluable voice in American poetry, her linguistic strength vivid in each poem in this pristine collection. She’s the real thing, and I celebrate her and Geosmin.” — Jay Parini, author of New And Collected Poems, 1975-2015

“Catherine Young celebrates land in such a wholehearted way that she nearly becomes the fir tree, “sheathed in resinous green, pulling at the sky / drinking sun,” and, back in her own skin, apologizes profusely for being “rootless” and “warm-blooded.” One might purchase Geosmin simply for its rich and varied vocabulary, beginning with the title, which we quickly learn, means “earth odor.” This tribute to the poet’s life in the Driftless bioregion of the Upper Midwest is also an homage to the humble and capable people who inhabit the area—as well as a warning that the earth is fragile and in danger.” — Joyce Sutphen, author of Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems

“Geosmin reveals the soil that roots us, the relationships that sustain us, the anger that improves us, the memories that make the future possible. In her compelling new book, poet Catherine Young refuses the solipsism of any language that detaches us from more than human things in order to make us more fully human. Each poem here moves away from complacency, sometimes with a nudge, sometimes a shove.” — Bruce Jennings, Editor of Minding Nature, a journal of the Center for Humans and Nature

“Worlds within worlds unfold, ambered in words, as we follow her wanderings on the land. Linguistic sensuosity matches the touch of skin on bark, the rocks’ dance, time and space openings from trilobite murmurings to the purple shimmer on Lake Superior’s shore. We roam through a year of change, visit with dairy and goat farmers in the Driftless region, browse in antique shops, and explore the workings of memory. Young’s Geosmin envelops us in the sense texture of a region, and distills its perfume.” — Petra Kuppers, author of Gut Botany

“In Geosmin, the poet, Catherine Young, narrates for readers what it means to unearth the subtle miracles of lichen, streambanks, fossils, and raspberry canes, and in so doing, what it means to be connected to our fragile and dazzling planet.” — Heather Swan, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies lecturer and author of A Kinship with Ash

“Geosmin is so lovely, substantial, and diverse that I am left in amazement as I sift through the forms, phrasing, textures and, again, those insights that come from experiencing earth – not merely observing it from a distance.”  — Troy Hess, Founder, On theYahara Writing Center