In Praise of Wilderness Poems (The Philippine Writers Series 2021)

On the moving and provocative force of ambiguity, these new poems by shane carreon have come far from his initial crossing of threshold in travelbook (UP Press, 2013) and have come through the grappling with uncertainties in Then, Beast (UP Press, 2017). In these poems, the enduring sense of the familial, the historical, and the intimate offers ambiguity in itself—through lyric transformation—as an unsettling form of clarity where farseeing is weighted by a certain lightness of memories and futures and the disturbing tenderness of provisional deliverance.

“The poetry of shane carreon upholds and sustains a seemingly magic pause between density and lightness. At once cerebral and passionate, these poems collapse the too easy boundaries between sea and sky. shane is the poet of the ‘in between’. He knows the science of trespass and the trip wires our language and cultural exchanges entail. The word wilderness once meant the place of ruin and death. Then it became, through the Industrial Revolution, a place of nostalgia. carreon’s praise is not as easy as romantic nostalgia, nor as damning as death and ruin. He is a poet who, with every poem, makes us redefine both what we damn and praise. This is an astonishing collection.”
—JOE WEIL

“The wilderness of silence that is the poet’s universe is filled with whispers, fraught with secrets. But dissident voices crack through the wall, offering poems that sometimes have the slippery quality of dreams, at other times bristling like spears. Nostalgia for the old country, affirmation for the newly found self, and hymns of love and loss are found in these pages. ‘Fidelity is a dark red star,’ shane carreon writes, and he does not only talk about the faith we reserve for our lovers. He also talks about his faith in his craft and his deep love for words, which shine luminous in this book.”
—DANTON REMOTO

Author: Shane Carreon
ISBN/ISSN: 978971542950-4
Category: Literary; Poetry
Copyright: 2021
Pages: 77pp
Size: 6x9
Type: PB/SP