Fire Pond

Jessica Garratt grew up in rural Maryland. A doctoral candidate, she currently teaches and holds a Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of Missouri. She has also received fellowships from the Michener Center for Writers and the MacDowell Colony. Her poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Michigan Quarterly Review, North American Review, and other journals. This is her first book.

"Jessica Garratt’s Fire Pond sifts through raw experience and suffering, toward acceptance and understanding of a deep nature. Garratt’s philosophical curiosity and openness are counterpoints to her refreshing wit and humor. She narrates her private heartbreaks candidly but without self pity or narcissism, while infusing her work with an Emersonian sense of place as sacred."—Medbh McGuckian "These poems are beautifully constructed handbooks full of clues toward the meaning of ourselves and our fate in the world and they are written in such a way as to show, unhidden, the steps the poet took in order to seek that knowledge...We can surely look forward to new and exciting work from this poet as she develops."—Christopher Crawford, Gently Read Literature

• AbstractI.CogitoWithoutAnswer ThisFoundationThe State of ThingsEn RouteTransmissionNeighborhoodMiradorHome after a weekend with old friendsPermanenceLeaving SykesvilleClimate of RefrainRotationFarewell!II.Fire PondIII.Woman drives past, cryingInfidelityFirst FlightElegyThe End of ThingsTrue NorthSelf-Preservation OdeEpiloguePilgrimThings said (me & others, dreams & waking, yesterday & years ago): An ExorcismExpressionBrooklyn, FebruaryFascicleNotesAcknowledgments