Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today

This is Melissa Kwasny’s sixth book of poems. Her previous collections include Pictograph, Reading Novalis in Montana, and The Nine Senses. She is also the author of Earth Recitals: Essays on Image and Vision. She has won both the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award and the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America.

• ContentsThe Hide and Skin Handbook1. The Deer People2. Another Letter to the Soul3. The Blue Heron People4. Another Letter to the Soul5. The Hawk People6. Another Letter to the Soul7. The Creek People8. Another Letter to the SoulNotes and AcknowledgmentsAbout the Author

"In Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today, Kwasny explores [the soul] like she's a hundred Wallace Stevenses looking at a blackbird (if the blackbird was a soul) and the result is a book that gives ‘soul’ the kind of in-depth attention it's needed, in a way that feels fresh and specific and full. . . . This is a collection that butts up against the idea that the soul is a pure, untarnished entity fit only for some afterlife in a heaven away from earth. It's also a collection about human limitations. The soul portrayed here is beautiful and messy, and our perception of it can't really ever be separated from the bodies we live in."