Nest of Matches - Paperback

by Amie Whittemore (Author)

Poems that bask in the beauty of nature, queerness, and love while exploring how dichotomies form identity.

Amie Whittemore's Nest of Matches is a lavish declaration of the beauty of the natural world, queer identity, and of the imagination set free. Whittemore's third collection explores the complexities of love--romantic, familial, and love for place--and wonders at cycles of life, finding that: "Every habit / even love--strangest / of them all--offers exhaustion / and renewal." Moving seamlessly from meditations on the moon's phases to explorations of dream spaces to searches for meaning through patterns of love and loss, Whittemore's work embodies the mysteries of dichotomies--grief and joy, consciousness and unconsciousness, habit and spontaneity--and how they coexist to create our identities. Throughout the collection, Whittemore reveals how interior nature manifests into exterior habits and how physical landscapes shape the psyche.

Author Biography

Amie Whittemore is the author of Glass Harvest and Star Tent. She was the Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her poems have won multiple awards, and her poems and prose have appeared in the Gettysburg Review, Blackbird, Smartish Pace, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Eastern Illinois University and directs MTSU Write, a from-home creative writing mentorship program.