Murmuration

With incredible scope and stunning lyricism, Erika Saunders's poems intertwine the sea, stone, space, with a lens always focused on love: "we are the waves / crashing, we are the castle walls / we are both the seal / and the shark stranded there / together on the moonlit beach." Erika's poems argue for the interconnectedness of all things. She examines cells with microscopic precision "as cell recognizes cell and pulls / together, tugged by the moon rhythm / of salt tides to rebuild the (w)hole." And she pulls out her telescope to examine the cosmos: "calcified remains of dying / stars litter the watery surface / like cosmic confetti." These poems illuminate mystery, and point towards meaning: "If we can translate the murmur / into words, we'll understand / destiny."

-Jodi Andrews, Skin Reverberations

Erika Saunders' poetry collection, Murmuration, is a paean to the gorgeous rushing swoop and torque of organic cycles: the baroque spiraling of starlings in murmuration; the departures and returns of birds in migration; seasonal birth and decay; gestational cycles; the ebb and flow of tides; the push and pull of the human heart. Here, the ecological interconnectedness of life on our shifting planet is celebrated as exquisitely precious, fleeting, precarious, and infinitely creative. This is a wonderful volume, in which Saunders' attentive presence within small, seemingly ordinary moments seeded in time and place emerges as both an act of grounding and an ecstatic surrender to infinitude.

-Lee Ann Roripaugh, Author of tsunami vs. the fukushima 50