Adaptations poems

by Smith, VA

• ISBN13: 9798991413473
• ISBN10: 8991413471
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-09-23
• Publisher: Green Writers Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Adaptation as trope, science, and story is a throughline in this collection. Its title nods both to accommodations to change as well as correcting/resisting a variety of existential, environmental, and historical toxins. In free verse and fixed forms, and in a variety of styles and idioms, a central speaker acts as a Greek/pop chorus, singing songs about an imperiled natural world as well as the tragi-comic adaptations of human being. The collection concludes with a Mobius strip series, “ On Evolutionary Adaptability: A Cthulucene, Sonnet Crown.” These final poems ask the reader to participate in a decentered human, activist planetary repair rather than adapt to the sufferings of climate-driven doom.

Author Biography

A frequent Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, VA Smith’ s work has appeared in several anthologies and in dozens of literary journals, among them: Southern Review, Calyx, Crab Creek Review, West Trade Review and Burningword Literary Journal. Her first two books are Biking Through the Stone Age and American Daughters (Kelsay Books, 2022-2023). A former Liberal Arts Teaching Excellence awardee at Penn State University as a Professor of Teaching in the Department of English, VA serves now as poetry editor at River Heron Review. Her bliss is writing, cooking, and hiking. Visit: vasmithpoetry.com

Table of Contents

I Wave Field How I Dream About Climate Change Each Other Peaches Before I Knew About Breakfast at Tiffany’ s Aria to My Glasses Moon Jellies Ukrainian Easter Eggs Chaos Theory On Visiting My Youngest Son in a State Correctional Institute History with Jehovah’ s Witnesses Mother Never Smoked II When Hayden Carruth Visited My High School Creative Writing Class High Rock Hiking Elegy for a Majorette Grindaví k, Iceland I Have Not Been Able to Write the Lake Ontario Poem How to Make January Casserole Caravaggio’ s Lightbox Poem in Which I Eventually Rock to Whitman Ode to the Dekopon III Gatherers Mothers and Thieves Winter Pearls I Lost the Word Fleece On Walking Richmond’ s Monument Avenue On Distinguishing Between Political Systems Over Sushi with My First Son and Grandson A Leaf is Both a Thing and a Process After Caterpillar IV On Evolutionary Adaptability: A Cthulucene Sonnet Crown Ulysses Also Steered by the Night Sky The Comfort Inn The Past Making Itself Present in the Future The Intricacy and Utility of Winged Creatures 72 Extra Life The Back and Forth of Things Green Dream Vision Notes Acknowldgments Gratitude