Oceanic

‘Reading Nezhukumatathil‘s poems is a practice in keenly observing life‘s details. The poet writes with a romantic sensibility about a world saturated with a deep sense of loss. Recommended for all poetry readers, especially those interested in ecopoetry.‘—Library Journal ‘Sensual and vivid, [Nezhukumatathil‘s] poems invite us deep into the water, where ‘colors humans have / not yet named glow in caves made from black coral and clamshell.‘ Her images are lush with eroticism, always close to the body and its experience of wonder. She blurs the line between human and animal, casting herself (and her beloved) variously as a scallop, a whale shark, a penguin, a starfish. Such marvelous acts of transformation reshape us as we read.‘—San Francisco Chronicle ‘…from the poetic structures that cultivate dazzling settings to the metaphors that brim with possibility, Oceanic… reawakens my curiosity for a world that still holds so many undiscovered wonders.‘—The Literary Review ‘[Oceanic] is an important work, both for its poetic merits and for its incisive capture of the increasingly precarious nature of life, both human and nonhuman, on this planet.‘—Ploughshares ‘Perfect for readers with a voracious appetite and a burgeoning curiosity.‘—Lit Hub ‘Her poems invoke a sense of connectedness… Nezhukumatathil weaves meditations on parenting and family-making among her lavishly rendered evocations of flora and fauna… Nezhukumatathil’s voice is consistent in its awe.‘—Publishers Weekly ‘Oceanic is a generous, romantic, and ambitious look at the different stages of life, and how we experience the love and wonder that lead us to become more fully realized and compassionate as we grow each decade... [it’s] Nezhukumatathil’s most cohesive collection to date, as she takes her prior preoccupations and dissects them in new ways that invite, as all of her work does, a sense of marvel and astonishment.‘—Tin House ‘I felt renewed wonder at nature’s immensities… yet ‘wonder,‘ a term so often found in responses to Nezhukumatathil’s work, aptly describes her poetry’s unique relationship to the natural world. Expressing awe, fear, and joy are political acts in Oceanic, particularly in a canon of nature writing that so often erases the voices of people of color.‘ —The Rumpus