ask river by Sara McAulay

Arctic solstice, the tick / tick of rotting ice / yellow yoyo winding time on its tether. An unearthed fossil, frozen bone-shaped stone, open as a singing throat. The flare of a beloved face lit by lightning—lover and stranger, in flash and afterglow. Equal parts wise and irreverent, holy and earthbound, Ask River evokes the power and beauty of the natural world—not just as setting or metaphor, but a presence as complex and conscious as its human speaker. In poem after poem, this world is revealed as site and source of grief and comfort, curiosity and humor and anger and resolve.

–Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet, author of The Greenhouse and Tulips, Water, Ash

Sara McAulay’s luminous Ask River winds through origin stories and ecological warnings, shimmers through seasons of fable and flood, doubt and devotion. From the intimacy of childhood creeks to the vast indifference of the Arctic tundra and the silent testimony of bones, these poems plunge into the currents of history and memory. McAulay possesses a storyteller’s dynamic voice; her lines sing with the silt of riverbeds, the “hiss and sigh” of Chesapeake waves. With grit and reverence, she interrogates humanity’s impact on the environment, the violent undercurrents embedded in names and borders. Ask River asks us to witness our own river-like capacity for creation and destruction, and to treasure our ever-changing, ever-present connection to the natural world and to each other.

–Erin Rodoni, author of And If the Woods Carry You

“Why pray / heaven help us? Why not river / help us, mountainside and lowland / see us safely home?” Sara McAulay’s poems in Ask River are lyrically stunning in a collection that is both intimate and expansive. With meticulous attention to image and sound, McAulay transcends her astute observations to explore the complex and often troubling relationships we humans have with one another and with the natural world.

–Pat Valdata, author of Where No Man Can Touch