Witness Before the Fall by Emily Cosper

In Witness Before the Fall, Emily Cosper notices beauty and the decaying world around her. She ceaselessly examines the passage of time, with poems about New Orleans, the West and personal loss offering wisdom which demonstrates that inevitable passage. The poems here provide generous, often wrenching clarity where “the salt seeps through orange groves” and “the wildfires burn to the west/piney woods and rice paddies turn to ash” through an original and highly accurate point of view, ultimately offering readers quintessential truths as only poetry can.

–Gina Ferrara, author of AMISS

I will forever treasure this debut collection, one of the most tenderly felt documents of la vie bohème de La Nouvelle-Orléans. With bittersweet, earned wisdom, Cosper says farewell to the “blackout charms” of the lush life, as one “in love with this sinking town” whose “phantom bruises dot the skin like points of interest or a forgotten friend,” but sees “through the fog hanging low across my brain like smoke on the highway.” These are the poems of a Carnival veteran, a Katrina survivor, and a grieving daughter, who has seen the costumes folded, and the scepters put away, leaving her knee-deep in her garden and the rich life that has grown around her many survivals. I’m grateful for these poems.

–Ed Skoog, author of Travelers Leaving for the City