Geometry of the Restless Herd

Sophie Cabot Black

In Geometry of the Restless Herd, Sophie Cabot Black stages a powerful allegory for the social and political realities of our human world. Through hauntingly metaphysical poems set within a sheepherder’s domain, Black conjures fields of harvest and resurrection, of wagers and outcomes—animals to keep, and those to send to slaughter. Here, both singular voices and polyvocal choruses ask, Who has the real power, and how are we to survive the violence we do to one another?

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ISBN: 9781556596926

Format: Paperback

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The Pale

Maybe I find what isn’t
there; what the mind can do

does not serve: now, here,
ever, and so the outline moves;

night asks for it,
a night gotten through

where I could not see
until some small morning

of breath, hoof, and blood
as the ewe refuses

to rely
on my vigilance: the watcher,

the watched,
and what comes between—

in the left grass
of winter she sleeps

under a bush,
the hush

stitches itself
to itself

and strict the moon
who would only

send back
what she was given

About the Author

Sophie Cabot Black has three poetry collections from Graywolf Press, The Misunderstanding of Nature, which received the Poetry Society of America’s First Book Award, The Descent, which received the 2005 Connecticut Book Award, and most recently, The Exchange.  Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. 

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Reviews

“Cabot Black’s stunning, fable-like fourth collection urges readers, ‘do not expect the known; you were not there.’ This unusual and poignant volume is equal parts gothic and pastoral, full of incisively written imagery characterized by sparse stanzas that allow each line to shine. . . . The poems in this collection run no risk of being mistaken for another poet’s oeuvre. Singular and striking in their movements and tone, they are a testament to delicate beauty. Cabot Black walks the tightrope between the gnomic and the visceral, and sticks the landing with the utmost skill and tenderness.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

“Form and content collude symphonically in Black’s lean, laconic poems. From catalog verse and aphorism, to persona poems in the voices of animals, language emerges as a co-creationary power. . . . The thrust of Geometry of the Restless Herd, while taking account of our straying, incomplete, and changeling natures, is toward revelation.” —Virginia Konchan, Harriet Books, Poetry Foundation

“I was not expecting a book of pastoral poems centered around sheep herding to be so scathing, fiery, and politically eloquent.”—Lily Naifeh-Bajorek, Poetry Society of America

“Black lays out a measured exploration of recent politics and inner turmoil in her latest collection. The poems vary from philosophical arguments to allegory rooted in a plot of farmland. In tight stanzas Black carefully frames her imagery. . . . Much like a moving and ferocious natural landscape, Black’s poems stir a progression of observations and emotions.”—Michael Ruzicka, Booklist