Ice

Poems

David Keplinger

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781639550173
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Literature

In Siberia's Yakutia region, animal remains up tofifty thousand yearsold have reemergeddue to climate change. Ice is an index of findings from the places most buried by time—in permafrost or in memory—and their careful excavations.

"I am asking how much more / I have to learn from this, "DavidKeplingerwrites. "You are asking that same question."As Earth's ancient ephemera floats to its rapidlyliquifying surface, he turns to our predecessors—animal, hominid, literary, and familial. Visitants arrive in the form of Gilgamesh, "searching for a way to stay in pain forever"; a grandmother mending socks, "her face in the dark unchanging";Emily Dickinson, lingering at her window;a lion cub, asleep in ice for millennia.

And alongside these comes a critique of the Anthropocene, ofourdriveto possess, ofour hubris. Ice shelves collapse. Climate change melts layers of permafrost to reveal a severed wolf's head. A pair of grease-smudged reading glasses calls up a mother's phantom. "I am sorry / for the parts you gave me / that I've misshapen, "Keplingerwrites. Witheachdiscovery comes the difficult knowledge of what—and who—we've harmedin the discovering

Sois there "a point to all this singing"? Our ancestors cannot answer. The wolf's head can't, either. But sometimes, "out of the snow of confusion, " something answers, "saying gorgeous things like yes." And the flowers "open up / their small green trumpets anyway."

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• I.
• II.
• III.
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author