Shipbreaking

Honored as one of BuzzFeed's "16 Best Poetry Books of 2015"
Honored as one of BuzzFeed's "24 Best Literary Debuts of 2015" 

Robin Beth Schaer's debut collection of poetry, Shipbreaking, charts a beautiful and dangerous journey. It is an intimate and interstellar odyssey where seas rise, mastodons roam, aeronauts float overhead, bodies electrify, and a child is born as a ship wrecks in a hurricane. The speaker here is curious and fierce, consulting scientists, philosophers, ancient maps, fossil bones, and lovers in order to survive and understand the strange majesty of living. With empathy and exaltation, the poems collapse the distance between natural disasters and human struggles, interweaving relationships between the upheavals and renewals that both the heart and Earth undergo.

From "Disturbance"

Put a silver coin on your tongue
with a penny underneath
and you can taste the electricity.

We said go slow but were urgent
as elephants, charging down
the power lines. Now the lights 

won't stay on and the trees
are down. Sleep until you're done,
I'm awake, brushing hands along

darkened walls, feeling for the switch.
It must be here somewhere. We are
electric; this is not a metaphor ...