Held - by Kathryn Nuernberger (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From award-winning author Kathryn Nuernberger, Held is a collection of essays about mutualisms, mutual aid, and ways of being together in a time of climate crisis.

Here is a collection about living in and with the consequences of terrible mistakes--Held contemplates our collective experiences of loss in an age of climate change and mass extinctions, as well as more personal tragedies. Each essay in this book describes a remarkable instance of symbiotic mutualism: bobtail squid host glow-in-the-dark bacteria behind their eyes so they can camouflage with moonlight on the water; there is a surprisingly erotic encounter between ants and a rove beetle; beavers and willow trees together turn deserts to verdant wetlands; and many more. To read Held is to be reminded of one's humanity and of our interconnectedness with the world that surrounds us.

Review Quotes

Nuernberger preaches the 'aesthetics of salvage' tenderly in this collection of lyric essays. This book showcases a poet and scholar's heart on the road, in an effort to hold 'increasingly fragile ecosystems together' in the face of tragedy. Held is a meditation on grief, and the tendrils of time, an exploration of how we are connected to all that has been and will be.
--Kao Kalia Yang, author of Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother's Life

"Held: Essays in Belonging is a masterpiece of close observation, surveying the natural world, the author's vulnerability, and the grief we all bear, with startling intimacy. Held is a whir, a song, a pulse, a buzz of language and empathy. Kathryn Nuernberger's use of the flash form in these meticulously researched yet deeply personal essays is magnificent."
--Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer

"I am always excited when a new book by Kathryn Nuernberger comes into the world, because her writing always expands my sense of possibility, connection, curiosity, and inquiry. Brave without bravado, vulnerable without pulling for pity, smart without arrogance, the essays of Held are prose poems that invite us to walk alongside Nuernberger's search for 'creatures who need each other, who know how to need each other' and also 'parasites, who haven't figured out yet what they can offer in return.' In honest reckonings with eco-grief and how that entwines with the social failures of racism and our care for those who struggle with mental health, Held is ultimately a book that seeks to see how we might better hold each other and this one, beautiful, beleaguered world."
--Elizabeth Bradfield, author of Toward Antarctica and Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry

About the Author

Kathryn Nuernberger is the author of the poetry collections, RUE, The End of Pink, and Rag & Bone. She has also written the essay collections The Witch of Eye and Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past. Her awards include the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an NEA fellowship, and "notable" essays in the Best American series. Her co-authored textbook with Maya Jewell Zeller is Advanced Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology. She teaches in the MFA program at University of Minnesota.