North True South Bright

This smart, lyrical collection explores the dangers of a world so complex that no single consciousness may grasp it—however much the attempt must be made. Following historical and imagined figures as they encounter specific moments or objects (such as Thomas Hariot in the Ameri-can Wilderness of the late 16th century), the poems attempt to record the unraveling of the safe and singular into a multiplicity of unknowns. Impelled by metaphor and lilting repetition, North True South Bright seeks a sense of the world, and ultimately, a sense of the Infinite.

Hariot’s Round
I know, to entice, to convince, I must sing
Your ear inside stone, must sing
Gold bitten and true, the corn kernel, one seed,
I must plant one gold seed in your mouth with my lips.
Raleigh says: the Queen known my name. The Crown
Of a woodpecker is ruby, but shy.
Inhabitants adorn themselves with feathers, and feathers
Bright on arrow ends. Bow—before a Queen. Bend closed my book.
The page is deaf that turns back to look at what it found.

"In North True South Bright, Dan Beachy-Quick proves the compass of his eye to be perfectly exact, precisely true. These poems are finely made contemporaries of sunlight. And, like sunlight, their history is Now."—Donald Revell