Nautilus Book Award gold winner
National Indie Excellence Award finalist
An elegant work of ecopoetry and a profound encounter with the real and potential losses of climate change
There Are Still Woods is a radiant appraisal of life at the precipice of climate crisis and a haunting elegy for all we stand to lose. Through alternating lenses, from the speculative to the spiritual, from motherhood to science to mythology, Hila Ratzabi looks out at our wounded but vibrant planet and the animal experience of living on it. These poems bear witness to the force and fragility of the natural world and grapple with the complexities of being a human in that landscape: being implicated, vulnerable, humbled, dazzled. These poems are ways of framing and enduring loss, personal and collective and cultural, real and potential and anticipated. They impart a heightened appreciation for the solid and fleeting beauty that surrounds us. Here is an ode to the earth, a vision of its end, a celebration of its endurance, an aching and eloquent plea for intercession on its behalf. Ratzabi’s first collection is a howl, a prayer, a premonition, a reawakening, and an urgent call to action.
“A marvelous rendering of a world that is both known and incomprehensible. … Ratzabi offers her readers an ambitious yet intimate vision, threaded by faith, nature, art, and family [that] requires us to hold the earth and our mortality in a vulnerable reckoning, insisting that our lives are inseparable from a greater force, which might be love.” —Rachel Eliza Griffiths, author of Seeing the Body
“Hila Ratzabi’s beautiful collection walks us through the hurricanes and melting ice caps of our late Anthropocene. … Her poems ache with environmental grief, with apostrophes of Arctic ice, with the joy of loving even in a burning world.” —Traci Brimhall, author of Our Lady of the Ruins
“This collection’s power lies in its minimalism, carefully structured couplets, and variety of poetic forms. … For those interested in climate change and its consequences, as well as ecopoetics, this collection is a must-read.” —US Review of Books
“[T]o go outside sometimes and consider the world as it is, right now, without metaphor or embellishment, this can be a kind of magic too. The stripped-down, clear, and present lyrics in Hila Ratzabi’s There Are Still Woods transform me with just this kind of magic. Despite her willingness to speak directly of horrors that can’t be ignored, reading the poems in this book, I am aghast at the splendid goodness and beauty that is still all around.” —Camille T. Dungy, ORION Magazine