Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Oceanic
    Oceanic
    Oceanic
    Ebook101 pages57 minutes

    Oceanic

    By Aimee Nezhukumatathil

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    "Nezhukumatathil’s poems contain elegant twists of a very sharp knife. She writes about the natural world and how we live in it, filling each poem, each page with a true sense of wonder." —Roxane Gay

    “Cultural strands are woven into the DNA of her strange, lush... poems. Aphorisms...from another dimension.” —The New York Times

    “With unparalleled ease, she’s able to weave each intriguing detail into a nuanced, thought-provoking poem that also reads like a startling modern-day fable.” —The Poetry Foundation

    “How wonderful to watch a writer who was already among the best young poets get even better!” —Terrance Hayes

    With inquisitive flair, Aimee Nezhukumatathil creates a thorough registry of the earth’s wonderful and terrible magic. In her fourth collection of poetry, she studies forms of love as diverse and abundant as the ocean itself. She brings to life a father penguin, a C-section scar, and the Niagara Falls with a powerful force of reverence for life and living things. With an encyclopedic range of subjects and unmatched sincerity, Oceanic speaks to each reader as a cooperative part of the earth, an extraordinary neighborhood to which we all belong.

    From “Starfish and Coffee”:

    And that’s how you feel after tumbling
    like sea stars on the ocean floor over each other.
    A night where it doesn’t matter
    which are arms or which are legs
    or what radiates and how—
    only your centers stuck together.

    Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of four collections of poetry. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and the prestigious Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, Nezhukumatathil teaches creative writing and environmental literature in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateMay 1, 2018
    ISBN9781619321762
    Oceanic
    Author

    Aimee Nezhukumatathil

    Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times bestselling illustrated collection of nature essays World of Wonders, chosen as Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year and as a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She has published four award-winning poetry collections and is the poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the storytelling branch of the Sierra Club. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with her family and is a professor of English and creative writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. 

    Read more from Aimee Nezhukumatathil

    Related to Oceanic

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Poetry Rx: This Is the Year

      Jan 3, 2019

      Poetry Rx: This Is the Year
      7 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      It is all, allover the earth, underearth, a graveyard: tree ferns, trees—roots,bark, seeds—ancientlife that emerged from the sea, forestsflooded to swamps& bogs, transformed to peat, transformedagain, sunk, coveredwith layers of earth with strangeamp

      2 min read

    • Article

      On Louise Glück

      Dec 1, 2021

      I WAS LYING in bed late at night, woeful, confused by another death, this one the death of a close friend; the losses had been mounting steadily, a bewildering number of losses, each one specific, difficult to accept, hard to overcome, and I must hav

      12 min read

    • Article

      Devil Asks Why You Would Mouth The Word Pity

      Jul 1, 2022

      even in this abundance of dark? Even in this abundance of dark you have totake the stars on faith. Look: Under today’s dim sky there is a basket.In that basket there is a fish. Come night, you are the animal that will eat the best parts of it. And ye

      1 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      (Residue, cellophane, liquid amber, pearl resin on cardboard) Platinum blonde, with whiteboxes of Russianchocolates. Silver liquid glitter,lemon candle, crimsonleather 1970 Mercedessedan interior. Gum drops, fox fur, creamblouse with gold specksand t

      2 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      The painting is of a door, its wood so warpedwith moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggestsomething sweet and almost unreachable behind the door—and you sit in yourroom working on the bills or those comforti

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Poet’s Craft

      Jan 1, 2020

      To begin with a definition: A poem is a text structurally constrained by the repetition of any language element(s). The continuum of poetic constraint is extensive, stretching from operations that a reader will find completely imperceptible to overwh

      9 min read

    • Article

      Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder

      Aug 17, 2017

      What, if anything, do you think poetry can do for us in these difficult times? The post Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Clarice Lispector’s Children’s Story Taught Me to Read Her Like An Adult

      Mar 17, 2017

      Filmmaker Pedro Almodovar was asked to write an introduction to the translated edition of Clarice Lispector’s final novel Breath of Life. Instead of a formal introduction, his refusal letter was published and said this of Lispector’s work: “Each phra

      7 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2022

      -ina: This suffix is used as an independent name,but doesn’t your little one deserve more?—a baby name origins website as in, I spent my playground days gasping endless into a machineas in, my elders blessed me with a second name, to ward off spirits

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Oceanic

    4/5

    13 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Oceanic - Aimee Nezhukumatathil

      Self-Portrait as Scallop

      When I Am Six

      CHICAGO

      My mother waters the tomato & pepper plants. I steal drinks from the penny-taste of the garden hose. It is my favorite drink. I am six & think to cross the street by myself from time to time, but never do. I am six, my sister is five, & we hide inside clothing racks at the store just to feel the black-sick fill our round bellies when we get lost, lost, lost from our mother. I am six & I am laughing with a mouthful of cashews. I think nuts is the funniest word I have ever heard. I am six & I break all my mother’s lipsticks & glue them together & put them back in her bathroom drawer. She’ll never notice. Sometimes I find sad envelopes, the ones with red and blue stripes, meaning these envelopes fly, meaning thin feathers, meaning bird with a little worm in the beak. Envelopes from her father, I think—she snatches them from my hand & says, No, no, where did you get these? Now put them back.

      On Listening to Your Teacher Take Attendance

      Breathe deep even if it means you wrinkle

      your nose from the fake-lemon antiseptic

      of the mopped floors and wiped-down

      doorknobs. The freshly soaped necks

      and armpits. Your teacher means well,

      even if he butchers your name like

      he has a bloody sausage casing stuck

      between his teeth, handprints

      on his white, sloppy apron. And when

      everyone turns around to check out

      your face, no need to flush red and warm.

      Just picture all the eyes as if your classroom

      is one big scallop with its dozens of icy blues

      and you will remember that winter your family

      took you to the China Sea and you sank

      your face in it to gaze at baby clams and sea stars

      the size of your outstretched hand. And when

      all those necks start to crane, try not to forget

      someone once lathered their bodies, once patted them

      dry with a fluffy towel after a bath, set out their clothes

      for the first day of school. Think of their pencil cases

      from third grade, full of sharp pencils, a pink pearl eraser.

      Think of their handheld pencil sharpener and its tiny blade.

      The Origin of Feathers on My Windshield

      The pelicans dip their brilliant sloppy bills

      into their tired shoulders and there is a certain bridge

      in Florida where you have to be careful not to hit them

      as they fly across windshields. I lost the only picture

      of me taken by a man who used to be the boy I loved

      when I was fifteen. When this man last visited me,

      all the pretty rivers in town were tannin-stained

      from a certain oak-and-chestnut mess. We walked

      carefully through glass galleries and a little bakery

      that sold a single gold-dipped strawberry. I was the girl

      whose hands gave up chewing through a dahlia long ago.

      Even he has crawled too far across soil to turn back now.

      And truth be told, so have I. I am like a man who prefers

      the taste of his own tongue instead of the lips of summer.

      My shadow and the shadow of sunflowers are the same.

      Sea Church

      Give me a church

      made entirely of salt.

      Let the walls hiss

      and smoke when

      I return to

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1