On the Edge of Knowing

Sam Aureli’s debut collection, On the Edge of Knowing, is an invitation to witness a journey unfolding, as each poem reveals a deep reverence for the natural world and what it has to teach us. Drawing on themes of belonging, temporality, renewal and purpose, and written with language that sings, we are shown the intricate, the underbelly, the fine grace of the ordinary. These poems ask us not to disturb the bloom, the nest, the branch — but to remain at the edge of things, where wisdom is found, where we might meet ourselves.

—Ellen Rowland, Author, No Small Thing

Blanketed in frost, bathed in sunlight, and kissed by sea spray, the poems of On the Edge of Knowing offer a soft riverbed in which to rest our wearing hearts and minds. This gentle collection, that would warm Mary Oliver’s heart, is the antidote to the loud, mad, modern world; it’s a thoughtful journey into nature to discover where we might belong among the soil and the stars.

—Jeff Bogle, Author, Street Cats & Where to Find Them and founder of Stanchion

On the Edge of Knowing marks the arrival of a poet writing compassionately of and through our greatest uncertainties, beckoning us toward our own darkness not so that we may lose ourselves in it but so that we may enter it and find there, within the tulips and daffodils, “the forsythia … / bright, burning yellow / at the field’s edge,” our deepest desires. “Even now, the earth begins again,” writes Aureli in his poem, “Even Now, the Light.” Through these poems, reader, you will hear the earth opening and find that you are already drawing closer to it.

—Asheley Nova Navarro, Sontag Mag