Powerful and resonant poems that explore what it means to be human at this time in history
Earth School
Poems by David Sloan
6 x 9 paperback, 84 pages
ISBN: 979-8-9903529-0-2; $18.95
Available for early orders
Read a review of David's last book A Rising & Other Poems
In Another Chicago Magazine
Praise for Earth School
Endorsed by Meghan Sterling
In his compelling collection, Earth School, Maine poet and educator David Sloan takes us deep into the earth’s human narrative, from ancient Greece to the war-torn 20th century to the cynical present, extracting memories and stories, and weighing lessons learned in this strange world we inhabit. How do we live with so much suffering, so much violence, so much sorrow, nearly all of which is of our own making? In the poem, “To My Grown Son, Outlasting His Anxiety,” Sloan describes how his son got over his fear of flying by jumping out of an airplane: “It was no miracle. You kept calling out the fear/steadied your breathing/ plunged into ice baths, found tiny footholds,/ inched up a rockface/ that dared you to look down. You didn’t stop/ at the summit; next stop,/ the sky,” and it is this boldness, this determination to look truth in the face that threads through Sloan’s work. From investigating our cultural myths to decrying the state of current events, Sloan’s powerful and resonant poems explore what it means to be human at this particular time in history, making meaning of the vastness, finding solace in the people we love, creating courage to live in the act of writing poems “turning free-fall into flying.”
—Meghan Sterling, author of Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions) and View From a Borrowed Field (Lily Poetry Review)
Endorsed by Stuart Kestenbaum
David Sloan is a poet who examines all the details, finding those transcendent moments where the everyday events of our lives are connected to something deeper. In Earth School he leads us to new ways of seeing through the vigor and precision of his language. His poems traverse a complex emotional landscape among the people and places he loves.
—Stuart Kestenbaum, Maine Poet Laureate 2016-2021
Endorsed by Jefferson Navicky
In Earth School, David Sloan brings us to a place built upon intuition, a poetry grounded in the earth yet attuned to the forces beyond our ken. A mother’s former ferocity fades; sons should be sadder, yet are left to ponder the link between “mother” and “smother.” Such word play and wit enliven these poems, and as I read them I felt in the presence of a master whose skill with language and metaphor constantly surprised me. Whether it’s long-flamed love or the enlightenment of a present moment, Sloan allows a reader to deeply feel these poems’ tenderness, unencumbered and transparent. In this book, as in Sloan’s title poem, “The tunes are always simple, / hummable, wise. / And when they end, / [we feel] both revived and forsaken, / a diver who glimpses treasure /and momentarily grasps the gold / before the currents rip it away.” We are greatly enriched by what Sloan leaves us.
—Jefferson Navicky, author of Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands