Praise for Alt-Nature
"Saretta Morgan presents ambidextrous poems that palpate the edges of many different borders." -Rachel Carroll, Los Angeles Review of Books
"In
Alt-Nature, Morgan deviates from mainstream representations of nature in a masterful re-tooling of vision and perception."
–Debbra Palmer, New York Journal of Books "Morgan skillfully weaves together landscapes, nuanced reflections on Black and queer identity, and social and ecological commentary in these stirring pages."
–Publishers Weekly "This is a haunting debut, a powerful reminder of how art can, and should, resist systems of oppression."
–The Poetry Question "Both expansive and compact,
Alt-Nature is ultimately outstanding. The dynamic poetry promises a refreshing swim through deep waters."
–Vivienne N. Germain, The Harvard Crimson "
Alt-Nature feels like a search party for the haunted, the story of a collective body, a nomenclature of ache for belonging. In an homage to the humanitarian aid worker and the border crosser who often does not make their intended arrival, Morgan moves the reader with her acuity for the precise image steeped in the blooming succulence and necropolitical dynamics that dictate the deserts of Central and Southern Arizona."
–Raquel Gutiéeacute;rrez "What is perspective without a horizon? What grave, no matter how old, is not fresh? What is the most precise language for what the government does to our bodies? Do wounds, do stitches, become part of the body? In the land, of the land? Is love waking up? Breaking earth? How much afterlife can a body bear? These are questions I find myself asking, or being asked, while reading Saretta Morgan's vigilant, exacting, extraordinarily tender book-length indicator species,
Alt-Nature."
–Brandon Shimoda "What is love set against and within austerity? Not the sudden lushness of oasis, but a discipline. Saretta Morgan's keen-whetted
Alt-Nature traces intimacies through severe stations–the military, border deserts, the Anthropocene–and finds/maps there the alterity of Black thought and life, which is to say, disciplines sharpened in harsh space-time. As I read and re-read Morgan's forceful collection, I find looseness and humor in nevertheless taut syntax, unease in certainty, shade in her generosity. This is etho-poetry as much as ecopoetry, an exacting meditation on what it is to cultivate freedom in "emotional fields of decay."
Alt-Nature is utterly gorgeous and, for readers committed to the labor of loving hard despite precarity and scarcity, utterly necessary."
–Douglas Kearney Past Praise: Praise for Feeling Upon Arrival Entropy, "Best Poetry Books of 2018""The precision of language in Feeling Upon Arrival seems to feint, only to land the blow elsewhere. In this text, the language of theory takes on the character of a metaphysics–I think that's what the feint is about. It is a good and hungry almost finding itself in the speaker's body." –Douglas Kearney
"Morgan's poetic voice is gorgeous and I am greedy for more." –Despy Boutris, The West Review
Praise for Saretta Morgan
"Saretta Morgan's work doesn't simply continue any one mode of writing, but works to permutate the orderings, genres, and possibilities for how text can function." –John Rufo, Ploughshares
