Newman, Denise: The Redesignation of Paradise

Kelsey Street Press, paperback Publication Date: October 15, 2024 Publisher Marketing:  In her notes to The Redesignation of Paradise, Denise Newman tells us she sets out “to write these poems to examine our entangled relationship to habitat.” With sparkling intensity, she asks anew, what is paradise and what is our relationship to it? Where is the eros of living beings in the scent map of our awareness practice? In bliss, in woe, or in between, every living being reproduces, creates, decomposes. Whether they are “doing it,” in nature or imagining it from the Garden State, “this is happening.” Rising and falling, there’s always a first day (and night) to create exceptions to a rule. Readers, Newman’s luminous, lambent poetic examination hits the mark. — Norma Cole, author of Fate News Denise Newman reveals a fecund, lusty world infused with the sheer energy of life, where “earth itself is having sex between particles of dust.” This paradise isn’t the protected space of the walled garde