Fruit Geode

In Alicia Jo Rabins' second collection, Fruit Geode, the terrifying power of maternal love coexists with sorrow for the loss of one's younger self. In lyrical, unfinching poems, Rabins investigates the passages of pregnancy, birth, and early infancy through a constellation of ancient and modern experience: Sumerian storm demons, astronauts, herbal medicine, Neanderthal DNA, mysticism, climate change. In tracing the ritual mysteries of motherhood, Fruit Geode examines what it means to be transformed, to leave behind our certainties and walk into the unknown. "I regard my former life / With a distant a ection, / As an astronaut / Looks through a porthole / At the small green planet / Where she used to live," writes Rabins. is is a book about what it means to live in a human body, how love changes us, and what we pass on from one generation to the next.

About the Author
Rabins, Alicia Jo: - Alicia Jo Rabins is a poet, composer, performer and Torah teacher. Divinity School, her first book of poetry, was selected by C.D. Wright for the APR/Honickman First Book Prize in 2015; her poems and personal essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, Tablet, and American Poetry Review. An internationally touring violinist and singer, Rabins is the creator and performer of Girls in Trouble, a feminist indie-folk song cycle about women in Torah, and has toured Central America and Kuwait playing fiddle music as a cultural ambassador for the US State Department. Alicia lives in Portland, OR with her partner and two children. She loves plants, ancient texts, and coffee. FRUIT GEODE (Augury Books, 2018) is her latest book.