Understory - by Rebecca Rotert (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Understory is an epic, a poem that historically follows the deeds and misdeeds of heroes. The hero at the heart of this contemporary epic explores the dominions of her native terrain, the passions and battles of the body, and of her own literal and figurative understory...the singular network of lives, desires, and liberations that sustain the larger story of a life.

Review Quotes

Understory is a wrenching and exhilarating portrait of a dazzlingly generous and resilient woman who lets the world instruct her, and instructs us through her gift for perceiving it. It unfolds as a hard-won celebration of the gift we're granted every day that we find ourselves on this planet and lucky enough to merge in body and spirit with those we love.--Jim Shepard, author of The World to Come and The Book of Aron

"How elastic is my heart, exactly? How far am I willing to go to find this out?" These are questions posed directly and indirectly throughout Rebecca Rotert's gorgeous and wise Understory. The real gift of this book is that it goes about answering those questions in such infinitely humane ways. I loved it."--Emily Danforth, author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post

With unerring ear and eye, the poet observes the enduring life of the forest she explores and simultaneously unearths fleeting moments shared with her beloved, revealing the human understory embedded within the overstory of nature's flourishing and diminishment. "Even the understory / has an understory" she reveals to us layer by layer.--Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, author of Still Pilgrim and Andalusian Hours