This debut short story collection showcases the talent of an award-winning author recognized by the PEN USA Award and the National Poetry Series Award. The stories delve into rich themes and explore the complexities of human experience, offering readers a unique blend of emotion and insight. Each narrative invites reflection, making it a compelling read for those interested in contemporary literature.
Exploring the complexities of memory, this work delves into the interplay between nostalgia and uncertainty. It weaves a contemplative narrative that reflects on how memories shape identity and influence perception. Through a blend of introspection and visionary insights, the book invites readers to ponder the elusive nature of recollection and the emotions tied to our past experiences.
A collection from celebrated poet Martha Ronk considering the relationship between person, body, and place. The Place One Is explores the intersection of person and place, the ways in which changes in the tangible world alter one’s vision, bodily posture, vocabulary, and concern for—to take one example—the dwindling water supply in California. The body’s position, its geometry, and the topography of the surrounding land become less and less recognizable as body and world blend together. Gravel giving way underfoot mirrors the way that words dissolve into mumbles, and the skeleton of a rusty car on the sand appears like one’s own skeleton. Ronk shows that disintegration here is disintegration there. These poems also wonder at interdependence, considering how lines intersect and continue to connect us to the sea—and to islands, lagoons, greenery, sky, and space. In the first part of the collection, the poems focus on a rural landscape, and in the second part, they consider the overly bright urban world of Los Angeles.
The poems in the book attempt to locate the slippery presence of silence in paintings and photographs, in the absences of bird sound, in ruin, pauses, and grief, and in the opaqueness of others and oneself. They address both the destruction behind some kinds of silence and the revitalizing possibilities in silent contemplation--