Evolution psalms - by Tayve Neese (Paperback)

About the Book

"Poems of solastalgia and change, Tayve Neese's evolution psalms moves from denial to acceptance exploring the individual and collective roles we as human beings must bear in this Age of the Anthropocene. Neese's poems call for a reconciliation with our own acts of violence from both a societal and personal facet so that we can "relearn how to speak / to one another." Often looking at the scientific through the lens of the spiritual and the spiritual through the lens of the scientific, evolution psalms explores the nature of attachment, emotionally and physically, moving away from grief toward contentment to cultivate a "Trust in the flesh's alteration, life-force's urn, / our salvation.""--

Book Synopsis

Poems of solastalgia and change, Tayve Neese's evolution psalms moves from denial to acceptance exploring the individual and collective roles we as human beings must bear in this Age of the Anthropocene. Neese's poems call for a reconciliation with our own acts of violence from both a societal and personal facet so that we can "relearn how to speak / to one another." Often looking at the scientific through the lens of the spiritual and the spiritual through the lens of the scientific, evolution psalms explores the nature of attachment, emotionally and physically, moving away from grief toward contentment to cultivate a "Trust in the flesh's alteration, life-force's urn, / our salvation."

Review Quotes

Praise for evolution psalms

Unsparingly personal and objectively incisive, Tayve Neese's poems reverberate with the disintegration, on the one hand, of a marriage, on the other, of our planet as, indifferent to our bequest, to all that is sacred, we stagger toward extinction. The poet's registers echo those of "The Tui of New Zealand," which "has two voice boxes / making two / distinct songs: // one blossoms / sorrow, / one reeks / of joy," ("I Know This Polarity"), embracing everything in between. On her path to reconciliation and redemption, she sings the natural and the supernatural-enigmatic, palliative, maternal-as the pungent, sinuous lyrics of Evolution Psalms affirm our provenance in the primeval.

Bhisham Bherwani

The Second Night of the Spirt

and The Circling Canopy

Tayve Neese's Evolution Psalms are, indeed, poetic praises to nature's evolving creatures in all their glory. However, this collection could also be named "The Psalmist's Evolution." Instead of crying out to the silence of King David's patriarchal God that has deserted him in the Old Testament, these psalms find a holy presence in the "gaseous beckon" of a "vibrating star" that "gives some direction," in a "baby whale thinking [a] yacht its mother," and in a "sea snail egg [that] "grew and hatched inside a boy's knee." These organic connections between all things stand in contrast to the false assumption that the sacred and the profane were ever separate. Psalmist Neese asserts, "it is my body in which you make your home." These poems reach down into our collective unconscious. Reading them will manifest their truth in our bodies.

Terry Lucas

Dharma Rain

Tayve Neese's laconic, dynamic, rhythmically impeccable poems evolve with the determination of banyan tree roots, bound only by the mesmerizing pulse of metamorphosis - skeletal, igneous, stellar, emotional. Their tapestry is filled with scale-defying wonders - a horseshoe crab, a feather, or a molecule of salt - relying on each other for space to coil around, to fork through, to nest in; representing love itself in its incessant earthly movement. Evolution Psalms is an unforgettable book capable of refocusing and refreshing the reader's vision.

Irina Mashinski - Co-Editor

The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry