The Dead Zoo
We’re proud to announce that our first publication is the astonishing sonnet crown The Dead Zoo by Chris Solís Green. We’ve all seen the headlines about climate collapse and species loss, but this book makes it personal and emotional as each of the fifty poems speaks from the perspective of an animal, plant, or place that is threatened or gone.
The Dead Zoo is a heartrending, beautifully written book of linked sonnets. It’s wondrously inventive, and yet inevitable, as though it had to exist. Taking its title from an Irish euphemism for a natural history museum, each poem in this book is from the point of view of, as the author tells us in his brief intro, “an extinct or threatened plant, animal, person, or place.” But by far the majority of speakers are animals. Those multiform, fellow beast, miraculous sharers of our planet prove eloquent about the consequences we face due to climate change. Their sonnet-monologues are haunting, instructive, and galvanizing.
—Amy Gerstler
I’ve been trying to work out why I love this book so extravagantly. Partly, it is the reminder, of course, that these disparate animals, each deserving of independent utterance, are connected in this indissoluble web. But it also calls to mind that we, the humans, have already a quiver of emotions, of cognitions, of metaphors, that might, just might, get us through this mess. Each poem here is a small piece of imaginative technology that incorporates the wisdom of generations. Let’s see if we dare to care and love enough.
—Liam Heneghan
This crown of sonnets by Chris Solís Green is an astonishment of woe and hope. At turns timely, timeless, unique, universal, intimate, and grand, these poems enable us to step out of our human self-absorption to envision creation’s domain as the inclusive home we share with manatee, polar bear, mourning dove, and sloth. The haunted and haunting voices of The Dead Zoo will make you weep for all we’ve lost; but long after the tears have dried, we shall carry the book with us as we dedicate ourselves to shepherding into reality the long-forsaken promise of global harmony.
—Richard Jones
$24.95
295 in stock