Writing the Significant Soil - Softcover

Sam, David Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1956368191 ISBN 13: 9781956368192

Publisher: Wayfarer Books, 2022

Synopsis

Winner of the Homebound Poetry Prize in 2021, Writing the Significant Soil by David Anthony Sam explores the long relationship of human life with nature without sentimentality or the cold distance of the clinical eye. Sam's poems reveal his own close connection with the Appalachian Mountains and the red clay of the MidAtlantic and Virginia as he searches for meaning in the act of living on and with the land by using the poetic ink he makes from the soil. The history of Virginia, bled into the earth by war and human struggle to live, interplays with the war we have made against nature and the land. The collection admits the danger we humans impose on the natural world while revealing a simple faith that that natural world will abide even as we as individuals give our identity back into the land we sprang from. The soil is significant in and of itself as life-giving place and because of our history of living on it.
This collection went on to win the Poetry Prize of the Virginia Professional Communicators Association and first place for poetry by National Federation of Press Women.

About this title

About the Author

David Anthony Sam, proud grandson of Syrian and Polish immigrants, lives in Virginia with his wife, Linda. His poetry has appeared in over 100 journals. Sam's most recent collection, Stone Bird, was released in 2023 by San Francisco Bay Press. Writing the Significant Soil was awarded the 2021 Poetry Prize by Homebound Publications and the 2022 Poetry Prize by the Virginia Professional Communicators. Six other collections are in print including Final Inventory (Prolific Press 2018) and Dark Fathers (Kelsay Books 2019). Sam teaches creative writing at Germanna Community College and serves as Regional VP of the Poetry Society of Virginia.

From the Back Cover

David Anthony Sam sings the psalms of our landscapes and skies— "declaration of rising sunsets," "mis-placed stars," and "a wave of feathers / breaking." He weaves together lamentation and faith, loss and acceptance. It's as though he's conjuring geological layers to rise up through the mountains where they sleep and at the same time mourning that which humans have wreaked havoc on, including one another. Pleas and praises occupy every line. His stunning articulations of the detrimental intersections between the natural world and humanity leaves me wounds split open, but with the salve of this life's persistent beauty, "It is a new season."
-- Angie Dribben, Everygirl 2020 finalist for Broadkill Review Dogfish Head Prize

What is a world but the many ways of our reckoning of it, with it?
Sometimes we meet it with muscle, other times with uncertainty or wavering despair. Swinging between changes of weather, we sift through limestone, red clay, and black bread. The snail keeps on, surely; even silences are a honey thickening in wells. "Make ink from what is burned," says David Anthony Sam in Writing the Significant Soil; give words to a life of meaningful cultivation.
- Luisa A. Igloria, 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia; author of Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (2020)

During a time when the natural world is increasingly under assault, David Anthony Sam's poems are especially relevant. He examines nature with the eye of a scientist and the reverential awe of a mystic. Whether he writes about sap from a maple during sugaring time, granite boulders in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Julius Caesar's last breath, or "atoms [that] ring / with the surprise of one true bird" in his body, he startles us with refreshing insights and identifications. He would say with Whitman: "And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." Writing the Significant Soil demonstrates the sort of empathy that we all need to keep the Earth and ourselves whole and healthy.
--Henry Hart, Professor at College of William and Mary; 19th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1028-20); author of The Ghost Ship, The Rooster Mask, and Background Radiation.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wayfarer Books
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1956368191
• ISBN 13: 9781956368192
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 106