Disquiet

Disquiet is a collection of poems that utilizes natural phenomena--a bright beach, a fallen tree limb, the weight of gravity--to evoke and reflect upon memory and human experience. The poems are structurally innovative, each shaped around a central axis as they trace the speaker’s growth from childhood to adulthood. Acute observations resonate throughout the book as its focus shifts from the natural world to the world of the made--the grocery cart or pie-case or microscope--to the world of visual art, and then back. The poems are subtly braided together in a way reminiscent of the invisible bonds that unite snowflakes or cells.

Disquiet is John Witte’s fourth book of poetry and his second book in the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, and numerous anthologies. The recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in Eugene, where he teaches at the University of Oregon.