Dropping Sunrises in a Jar - by Melinda Thomsen (Paperback)

About the Book

In Dropping Sunrises in a Jar, a poet travels the world to experience sunrises and learn why nature welcomes dawn with such joy, not dread. In each local, the earth confirms its happiness

Book Synopsis

Each poem in Dropping Sunrises in a Jar attempts to understand why birds appear happy at sunrise. Written from notes spanning over twenty years, the poems glimpse nature's inner workings of joy. In free verse, sonnets, and formal poems, sunrises from across the globe are depicted in a variety of awakening colors and sounds. Poems recount the morning's opera from locations like a sleeping car on a train going to Beijing to Prague with its construction noise. Other poems remain stateside with the cooing of doves in North Carolina and canyon towhees in Arizona. By a steady progression of sunrises, readers will ultimately find themselves released back into their world with a humorous, hopeful reprimand from the Sun itself.

Review Quotes

I love that poet-philosopher Melinda Thomsen has turned her wise but uncynical eye and voice towards the tragedy of climate change. Thomsen writes, "I wake to the sky's daily burning/in these-my sunset-years to collect sunrises...like candles gathered from my forgiving earth... But this burning keeps flushing out the birds..." Thomsen writes extensively of birds, those things with feathers, to give us what I love best in eco poetry, hope-punk. But, sad and knowing as her poems often are, Thomsen can't help but bring her child-like wonder to the world, and for that I am grateful.

-ELIZABETH J. COLEMAN, editor of Here: Poems for the Planet, Copper Canyon Press, 2019

In Dropping Sunrises in a Jar, Thomsen skillfully highlights and juxtaposes the cyclical nature and beauty of sunrises and the corresponding splendor and chaos of local fauna, flora, as well as man made technologies. From mynas in Maui, bridges in New York City, construction in Prague, to warblers in Maine, Thomsen's celebration of origins and beginnings cleverly serves as an homage to rebirth, routine, and hope.

-JOSE HERNANDEZ DIAZ, author of The Fire Eater, Bad Mexican, Bad American, and The Parachutist