Mean Distance from the Sun

Risa Denenberg’s Mean Distance from the Sun is a stunning collection of poems that finds the beauty in loss and life, while expanding experience into art. With Denenberg’s engaging voice, we are taught: How to locate stillness: root in dirt and On certain/Thursdays there is no/stopping me. We move gracefully through diverse topics from suicide to sex, poetry to pain, captivatedly turning the page to see what comes next. Full of inventive images, Denenberg’s poems do what we need—stay clear while continually offering mystery. These poems, while sometimes small, are always complex and together create an amazing debut collection to read again and again.
—Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Hourglass Museum and Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room.
Risa Denenberg's Mean Distance From the Sun interrogates the surprising and unstable nature of our relationships with God, with other people, and with our own bodies and the universe. Risa's language leaps from the simple and concrete to astonishing metaphor with ease, and takes us on a fascinating journey about how we come to know others, and ultimately, ourselves.
—Jeannine Hall Gailey, author of She Returns to the Floating World, Becoming the Villainess, and Unexplained Fevers.