Bicycle Lotus

"Backer is within and without tradition, conversing with William Carlos Williams, Coyote, and prison inmates, and saying nothing that all of them can’t understand." -Eric Paul Shaffer, author of Lahaina Noon

There are no observers in the food chain. Like it or not, we're in nature and nature is in us. So, what do we do about that? In this hybrid collection of poetry and short essays presented as a chronological narrative, Sara Backer explores the choices we make to embrace and reject the wild world. Backer shows us this is not easy, and when insight arrives, awareness becomes a demanding and never-ending job. If you pay close attention, though, the rewards are spectacular.

This chapbook won the 2015 Turtle Island Poetry Award. According to Turtle Island editor Jared Smith, "This is what a chapbook should be all about—a precise and mind expanding voyage into a state of mind that could not be entered into through a longer work—and yet contains more than any work of similar size possibly could."