Wedding of the Foxes

(Paperback)

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From celebrated poet and ecologist Katherine Larson, an elegant collection of lyric essays that embraces fractures, contradictions, and the interconnectedness of life on Earth.

Raising two children, coping with pandemic isolation, and grappling with the magnitude of the current extinction crisis, Katherine Larson finds herself in need of an antidote for despair. This is when Larson encounters kintsugi-the art of repairing broken pottery with gold-dusted lacquer.

Wedding of the Foxes borrows from this ancient practice to create a new interpretative framework, one that seeks beauty in both breakage and unexpected connections. Here, Larson juxtaposes the elaborate courtship dance of sandhill cranes with scientific reports on diminishing avian populations to shed light on the urgency of climate crisis. She braids the wisdoms of a wonderfully varied range of forebears and predecessors-Gaston Bachelard, Tawada Yko, Francis Ponge-who share her dream of a liberated consciousness. She weaves Susan Sontag's examinations of cinematic disaster with the legacy of Godzilla to highlight nature as both savior and destroyer, and she writes letters to Japanese women writers whose work has taught her new ways of being. Each of these disparate parts come together to highlight the beauty in "what falls through the cracks and blurs into other moments."

Brimming with the dazzling yet fragile relationships we share with each other and with other species, these lush microcosms invite us to embrace resilience and mindfulness-and the illuminating truth of our connections.

Reviews

Praise for Radial Symmetry

Larson elides the lyrics sensual impulsivity with biologys reasoned patience. [. . .] Bracingly artful [. . .] Radial Symmetry marks the arrival of a poet whose work merits many readings.Alison Hawthorne Deming, Orion

Larsons repose is also a quivering suspension, in which multiple perceptions, multiple elements are held in extended and mysterious relation.Louise Glck, foreword for Radial Symmetry

Larson explores how science and art collapse into each other, articulating her experiences in sensual, Cartesian termsand the result is work that is both intellectually and emotionally engaging. [. . .] She sees the scientist and artist, pain and pleasure, the present and past, and traces circles around all of them, beginning to end, with herself as their center. And so she writes.Ploughshares

Author Bio

Katherine Larson is a poet, essayist, molecular biologist, and field ecologist. Her debut collection of poems, Radial Symmetry, was selected by Louise Glck as winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets. The recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, she has been published in numerous literary journals including Poetry, Orion, and AGNI. Larson is active with organizations and artists dedicated to conservation and environmental education in the Gulf of California. She lives with her family in Tucson, Arizona.