Flood Plain

The poems of Flood Plain might be put forward as a type of evidence, data or samples carefully collected for study. But they are also much more than this-- they are the poet’s own testimonies, first-hand records revealing, page after page, her powers of observation and witness. ＂ The flood plain is a field again,＂ Sewell writes in ＂ Restorative Justice,＂ a reminder that natural disasters take many forms. ＂ The flowers will last until the first snow / of winter as everything conspires / to bury us in what we couldn’t see or imagine.＂ Indeed, poetry may be our flood plain: the site on which we absorb these truths, and the means to process the weight of it all.

Lisa Sewell is the author of The Way Out, Name Withheld, Impossible Object, and Birds of North America, an artist’s book collaboration with Susan Hagen and Nathalie Anderson. She has edited several essay collections for Wesleyan University Press that focus on twenty-first century North American poetry and poetics, including North American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Beyond Lyric and Language, with Kazim Ali, and American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics, with Claudia Rankine.