Tender Currencies

Written with the discernment of koans, Tender Currencies-a narrative of climate, location, and geologic and human transformations-struck me with its lush language, steady rhythms, and exquisite descriptions. Here is a work of close observations of species, land formations, and internal reflections that honor healing and reconciliation, while also seamlessly incorporating the personal: family history and a dazzling finale of love poems.

-Risa Denenberg, author of slight faith and Rain/Dweller and Sally Albiso Award Judge

Scot Siegel's Tender Currencies is a book so deeply, so beautifully imbued in place that it almost has a piney scent, a weather pattern, a distinctive gaze. Siegel has a sage, honest voice that explores the difficult but winsome territory between solace and desolation. Whether grounding us in playa, lake, and canyon, or in the expanses of history, time, and love, these poems remind us to root ourselves where we are, as who we are. "This could be a new way to / see yourself in the world," he writes. Indeed, Siegel's remarkable book gives us many crucial and loving new ways to see the world itself as well.

-Annie Lighthart, author of Pax

Containing some of the finest, most delicate love poems I've ever read, Scot Siegel's beautifully nuanced new collection tangos in delightfully fresh imagery, between past and present, between family history, parental awe, and social awareness; and between mourning "the rusted gears of Earth's cartilage" and remembering that "history leaves the door open" for acts of faith, for a "confluence of trust and reconciliation," for reconnecting rivers to their "natural systems," and for healing: for allowing the "unknown particles" of stars to once again make our hearts and "the dark sky dance."

-Ingrid Wendt, author of Evensong