Honored as one of BuzzFeed's "16 Best Poetry Books of 2015" Honored as one of BuzzFeed's "24 Best Literary Debuts of 2015"Â
Robin Beth Schaer's debut collection of poetry, Shipbreaking, charts a beautiful and dangerous journey. It is an intimate and interstellar odyssey where seas rise, mastodons roam, aeronauts float overhead, bodies electrify, and a child is born as a ship wrecks in a hurricane. The speaker here is curious and fierce, consulting scientists, philosophers, ancient maps, fossil bones, and lovers in order to survive and understand the strange majesty of living. With empathy and exaltation, the poems collapse the distance between natural disasters and human struggles, interweaving relationships between the upheavals and renewals that both the heart and Earth undergo.
From "Disturbance"
Put a silver coin on your tongue with a penny underneath and you can taste the electricity.
We said go slow but were urgent as elephants, charging down the power lines. Now the lightsÂ
won't stay on and the trees are down. Sleep until you're done, I'm awake, brushing hands along
darkened walls, feeling for the switch. It must be here somewhere. We are electric; this is not a metaphor ...