The Forest // Poems (Pre-Order, March 2 2027)

A visionary new collection by former poet laureate of the United States and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Tracy K. Smith

The forest in Tracy K. Smiths brilliant new work is and is not a metaphor. While these poems strive to hear and to heed the voices of the earth and its nations of trees, they also test a discomfiting view of humanity, not as divided and opposing factions but as a vast cacophonous family connected by a single deep root.

The Forestgrapples with violence, cynicism, and injustice by tapping into the ecstatic for much-needed insight, humility, and conviction. Enlivened by slow time and spiritual desire, Smiths poems are political and devotional conduits that bear witness to meditative visions and channeled conversations with ancestors and ascended guides. Several poems honor motherhood and the particular care bound up in mothering Black sons. Others come to terms with grief and a failed marriage now so distant as to be another life. Hovering always near, the divine feminine is a figure called forth to refute the God of War.

The Forestis a magnificent act of foresight beyond the granular realities of partisan depravity, polarization, and indifference. Smith reaches an exhilarating new height, in contact with the mythic and the rapturous.

Tracy K. Smithis the author of five previous poetry collections, includingLife on Mars, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. From 2017 to 2019, she served as poet laureate of the United States. Smith teaches at Harvard University.

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publish Date: March 2, 2027
• Pages: 88
• Language: English
• Type: Hardcover
• EAN/UPC: 9781644454312
• Dimensions: 228.6 X 6.0 X 25.4 inches | 1.0 pounds
• BISAC Categories: Poetry