Shedding Season - by Jane Morton (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A kitchen hums with flies. Grackles fill the branches of a tree. A bruise blooms over skin. In Shedding Season, nature threatens to overwhelm those who would keep it in check. Instead, Morton explores what it means to refuse the language of dominance, to recognize oneself as a small part of an impossibly complex ecosystem. From this vantage, insect legs form a chorus and violence is worked like a bow against an instrument, attempting beauty. In turn, a house becomes a trap, a family a threat, and the notion of salvation something you can drown in. In these poems, a broken narrative follows cycles of violence and ecological degradation across generations, illuminating the ways in which our relationships--with others, our environments, and ourselves--define us even as we define them.

With language, image, and narrative always in flux, these poems inhabit the grey areas between desire and disgust, safety and survival. In constant search of breaking points, Morton interrogates the impermanence of identity: how many times can something evolve before it becomes something else?

Review Quotes

The potent, lush poems in Shedding Season shine with livingness, with life, with "human / experiences salty & bright." Jane Morton skillfully turns the experience of being--of living in a body--over and over in her palm, and each turn reveals something deeper, something more. --Carrie Fountain, author of Instant Winner

In spare lines of unwavering clarity, Jane Morton writes on the ruthless, animal persistence of life under inhospitable conditions. Their compressed landscapes and images conjure venom and heat, flies and the sound of rattles from dark corners, and the soft bellies and throats so vulnerable under the surface of it all - violent relationships, knives at the gas station, milk poured in a bowl for a dog after her teeth fall out, and a life in which "We all deserve an apology / We all deserve death. Somehow / We get by with neither. Time passes. Everyone forgets." -Cleo Qian, author of LET'S GO LET'S GO LET'S GO

Shedding Season sparkles with the enchanting essence of myth, prayer, and creation. Morton's vibrant, nimble voice channels the Southern storytelling tradition, rich with visceral language that evokes guts, teeth, and soil "rich to taste." These intimate and tender verses celebrate the beauty found in decay and darkness, exploring the scaly, hidden corners where life emerges and resilience is forged. Through an alchemical journey, Shedding Season weaves together an origin story, a love song, and a profound reckoning in an essential collection that captivates and resonates and shimmers with the idiom of Southern life. Morton's poignant voice carries the irresistible music of folk magic, showcasing an exceptional talent for inventive metaphor and lyrical grace. -Essy Stone, author of What It Done to Us

"Before I spoke, I was only my body," writes Jane Morton, evoking both the physicality of these poems and the power of this poet's voice--not to transcend, but to excavate and exalt. In lapidary and piercing verse, Morton conjures an ominous, charged atmosphere where craving and revulsion, sudden violence and languorous decay, are inextricable and maybe even interdependent, where "We all do / what we know / even when we hate it." What a thrill to encounter Morton's steely candor, to feel them grip the beloved and "push my fingers in... to feel / the death underneath." -Joel Brouwer, author of Off Message

Allow yourself to be bitten. Loll, linger in this unique collection of serpentine, entrancing poems where "A snake does not mean/what a snake means." The animal is only terribly hungry, steadily moving through its days of imperception towards clarity. Its hunger will be satisfied even if it must consume itself to survive. Likewise, the speaker has found shedding as a means of survival, a way to be newborn. These poems are close enough to taste, sharp enough to leave marks. -Kwoya Fagin Maples, author of Mend

About the Author

Jane Morton's chapbook Snake Lore won the Black River Chapbook Competition and was published by Black Lawrence Press. Her individual poems and short stories have been published widely in literary journals including Gulf Coast, West Branch, Boulevard, Passages North, and Ninth Letter. She holds an MFA from the University of Alabama, where she was Online Editor for Black Warrior Review. Based in Birmingham, Alabama, Morton currently teaches creative writing at the University of Alabama.