Small Pointed Things by Erica McAlpine PRE-ORDER
Published 24th April 2025. Available for pre-order.
Punctuated by rhyme and shaped by traditional poetic forms, the poems in Small Pointed Things take up the themes of marriage, motherhood, and family life, distilling everyday occurrences into moments of self-discovery. Poignant and funny in equal measure, many of these poems address human concerns comically reimagined through the analogous “lives†of plants and animals—from snowdrops to love-lies-bleeding, manatees to warthogs, scorpions and moths to bats and swallows. Animals and insects provide opportunities for learning: the difference between bats and swallows unpacks the complexity of spousal relations, two down-and-out warthogs arouse sudden, if unwarranted shame, and a pair of singing blackbirds tenderly expose the secret to marital compatibility and compromise. There are also poems about poetry and ideas—and the pressures motherhood can inflict on the thinking mind. And there are likewise poems about lasting love and grief. Formally deft and classically inspired, with hints of Wordsworth, Frost, and Marianne Moore, the poems in Small Pointed Things seek to uncover various forms of knowledge while taking aim, ultimately, at knowingness itself.
Punctuated by rhyme and shaped by traditional poetic forms, the poems in Small Pointed Things take up the themes of marriage, motherhood, and family life, distilling everyday occurrences into moments of self-discovery. Poignant and funny in equal measure, many of these poems address human concerns comically reimagined through the analogous “lives†of plants and animals—from snowdrops to love-lies-bleeding, manatees to warthogs, scorpions and moths to bats and swallows. Animals and insects provide opportunities for learning: the difference between bats and swallows unpacks the complexity of spousal relations, two down-and-out warthogs arouse sudden, if unwarranted shame, and a pair of singing blackbirds tenderly expose the secret to marital compatibility and compromise. There are also poems about poetry and ideas—and the pressures motherhood can inflict on the thinking mind. And there are likewise poems about lasting love and grief. Formally deft and classically inspired, with hints of Wordsworth, Frost, and Marianne Moore, the poems in Small Pointed Things seek to uncover various forms of knowledge while taking aim, ultimately, at knowingness itself.
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