{"product_id":"figure-in-a-field","title":"Figure in a Field: Poems \u0026 Investigations","description":"\u003ch3\u003eSiobhán Scarry\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"..\/pages\/illuminations-series\"\u003eIlluminations: A Series on American Poetics\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEdited by Jon Thompson\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eInformation and Pricing\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e978-1-64317-653-6 (paperback; $18.95); 978-1-64317-5654-3 (PDF, $19.95); \u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e978-1-64317-655-0 (EPUB, $19\/95).\u003cstrong\u003e \u003c\/strong\u003e© 2025 by Parlor Press. 94 pages.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBookstores\u003c\/strong\u003e: Order by fax, mail, or phone. \u003ca href=\"..\/pages\/order-books-4\"\u003eSee our \"Sales and Ordering Page\" for details.\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- Elfsight PDF Embed | Figure in a Field: Poems \u0026 Investigations --\u003e\n\u003cscript src=\"https:\/\/elfsightcdn.com\/platform.js\" async=\"\"\u003e\u003c\/script\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"elfsight-app-284d51f8-f29e-47b9-a613-6259878c9839\" data-elfsight-app-lazy=\"\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eDescription\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eFigure in a Field: Poems \u0026amp; Investigations\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, Siobhán Scarry’s second collection, combines poetry with hybrid works that blur the distinction between poetry and criticism. The author, a poet and scholar living in Kansas, turns her attention to the tallgrass prairie, not simply as the new landscape and ecosystem she and her young child explore, but as the departure point for an extended investigation into the pastoral form and its impulses. How do our writings about the natural world reveal the stumbles that have led us to our current environmental precarities? How might the land itself teach us otherwise? Suffused with epistolary energies, the collection addresses the Midwest, the prairie grasses, and the lyric itself as poems explore motherhood, resilience, and making a life in language. Deeply intertextual throughout, the poems and investigations make visible their debts to philosophers and poets from the American transcendentalist tradition to contemporary poetries and poetics.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat People Are Saying\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003eFigure in a Field: Poems \u0026amp; Investigations\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSiobhán Scarry takes on the ecopoetics of a so-called flyover state, looking at the prairie as something both elegiac and evangelical. Each poem is an intervention with the pastoral as a mother in a burning world, asking if an idyll is always a fiction. In conversation with other poetic and feminist texts, this book is literary criticism meets poetic praxis. Scarry searches for forms – the epistolary, the hermit crab, the lyric essay – to hold what the body can no longer carry. Insightful and beautifully written, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003eFigure in a Field\u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003easks what we can do\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003ewhen all the wandering that's left is in our own thoughts and how to care for the world when we have infinite love but finite time. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e—\u003cstrong\u003eTraci Brimhall\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eLove Prodigal; \u003c\/em\u003ePoet Laureate of Kansas 2023–2026\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e “I have learned the simplest things late, but not last. . . . My child, what do you make of the night birds? Your new hearing, mine revised,” says Siobhán Scarry, in her interrogative new \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eFigure in a Field: Poems \u0026amp; Investigations\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e. Echoing Charles Olson’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eMaximus Poems\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, Scarry finds her mythos not in the geologic past but in the immediate needs of her son, the figure of care: love as “the fractured package language arrives in.” The place is Kansas, the random draw of an academic life. The interrogation is the pastoral, the de facto lyric mode but also its idealized and gendered production, a male gaze struck by the sound of its voice. For our harvests are actual responsibilities, or what does the pastoral leave out? “You may put a toddler in your eclogue like another goat or flower, but someone must make sure the child does not brain himself on the rocks.” The full title’s key; the “investigation” is a kind of auto-ethnography of a writing life, its ambitions and disappointments, durations and surprises. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eFigure in a Field\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a lyric liberation, or a liberation from the lyric only, w\/self-interviews, letters, prose poems, erasures, footnotes, a feminist breviary, a long intertextual “a-pastoral,” a field guide to roaming, and a loving treatise on single parenting. Bountiful, self-revealing as process, but also a source book of creativity itself, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eFigure in a Field\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is that rare thing, a book both beautiful and useful. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cspan\u003e—\u003cstrong\u003eMatthew Cooperman\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSpool\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eTime, \u0026amp; Its Monument\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, and \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003ethe atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis is a book of meadowing that widens the pastoral to let in everything else that is life itself. What lies outside the frame cuts through the scene as it unfolds, making the pastoral not frozen but as changeable and fluid as time itself. This book offers the only antidote to the present, presenting what is real as the way through to a future with no end and no beginning—only the poem can open the field wide enough for the green world to enter. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e—\u003cstrong\u003eK Prevallet\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Varied and Tender Multiplicity \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0050\/3028\/1251\/files\/Scarry_AuthorPhoto_160x160.png?v=1794579916\" alt=\"\" style=\"margin-left: 5px; float: right;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSiobhán Scarry\u003c\/strong\u003e is a poet, critic, and educator. She is the author of the poetry collection \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003ePilgrimly\u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e(Parlor Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eAbout Place Journal, The Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, jubilat, Mid-American Review, The Missouri Review, New Letters, Terrain\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, and elsewhere. Her scholarly work on 20th- and 21st-century American poetries has appeared in \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSagetrieb, Southern Humanities Review, Paideuma\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, and elsewhere. Scarry earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from the poetics program at SUNY Buffalo. She is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Bethel College in Kansas.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhotograph of the author by Siobhán Scarry. Used by permission.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Scarry","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44224005799971,"sku":"978-1-64317-653-6","price":1900.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true},{"title":"PDF","offer_id":44224005832739,"sku":"978-1-64317-654-3","price":1000.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true},{"title":"EPUB","offer_id":44224049020963,"sku":"978-1-64317-655-0","price":1000.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0050\/3028\/1251\/files\/FigureInAField.jpg?v=1794575777","url":"https:\/\/parlorpress.com\/en-in\/products\/figure-in-a-field","provider":"Parlor Press","version":"1.0","type":"link"}