Rain, Wind, Thunder, Fire, Daughter

Poems

H. G. Dierdorff

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781647791711
• eBook ISBN: 9781647791728
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

2022 Betsy Joiner Flanagan Poetry Prize winner

Rain, Wind, Thunder, Fire, Daughter is a story about leaving religion and coming of age in a world of accelerating climate apocalypses and environmental loss. In her debut collection of poems, H. G. Dierdorff interweaves an investigation of wildfires in Eastern Washington with a personal account of growing up in Christian fundamentalism, calling our attention to the violent histories undergirding both.

"I want you to touch the fire / sparking from my lips" the opening sonnet commands, daring the reader to abandon the safety of analytical distance and draw near to the moment of ignition itself. The voice that emerges is incessant, ecstatic, explosive. Fire erupts from every page, multiplying into rage, desire, judgement, responsibility, and renewal. 

A love song to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a dramatic portrait of a daughter struggling to find her place in her family, and a philosophical exploration of the limits of language and belief, this collection demands the necessity of both pleasure and grief as responses to a world on fire.
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Invoke | Revoke
• Genesis
• A Power Comes Up Between the Voices
• Sonnet Two Blocks from a Strip Mall
• The Poet Wanders Between Memory and Dream
• Eve Speaks of Her American Childhood
• A Poem Changes Nothing
• Sonnet Ending in People’s Park
• Wood | Word
• The Summer Before My Baptism, We Go Backpacking in Eastern Oregon
• Animalia
• Rain, Wind, Thunder, Fire, Daughter
• The Poet Learns About Particle Physics
• Prophet | Profit
• Sonnet with a Mouth Full of Dollar Bills
• Mapping the Channeled Scablands
• A Ponderosa Pine Reader
• A Classical Christian Academy
• I Place My Mother in a Scripture
• Phonics
• Double Sonnet with My Shirt Off
• Bridal | Bridle
• A Feminist Field Guide
• Wedding in America
• Psalm Sleeping Between Circles & Lines
• The Poet Forgets James 3:6
• Sonnet Starting with Arson
• The Poet Parses the Haze
• Virginity: A Chronology
• Exodus
• After Moving to Virginia, Alone
• The Poet Rethinks Her Profession
• This Belief, This Window
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Limbo
• Sightseeing in the Pandemic
• None of the music I know is for only one voice
• Self-Portrait as Diorama of a Room at Dusk
• Nostalgia as Match Factory with Women Inside
• Awaiting the Apocalypse in Old Dominion
• Sonnet with Dante, E.T., and Ted Berrigan
• Incantation for the Anthropocene
• Meet-Cute in the Anthropocene
• Extended Sonnet with Turkey Vultures
• After the IUD insertion, i go camping in West Virginia
• On Seral Stages and Falling in Love
• Poem in which i erase god’s name from the New Testament
• The Field of Particles Where i Fall
• Religious Trauma
• My father asks, “How do you define love apart from God?”
• The Lyric “I” Goes Shopping at Trader Joe’s
• A Middle-Class Pastoral
• An Apostate’s Abecedarian
• Ode to the lowercase “i”
• As if i could speak for the trees.
• Matins
• Fire Map: California, Oregon, and Washington
• A Short Catechism
• When we met, we were being paid
• Woman who escapes Santiam Fire on foot loses her mother and son to the flames
• Litany to Be Recited by My Hands
• A Brief Lesson in Rimming
• Only a Quarter of Species May Survive the End of the Century
• Forty miles south of my parents’ house, a wildfire decimates the small town of Malden and consumes thousands of acres of wheat
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author