Murmuration by Erika Saunders

With incredible scope and stunning lyricism, Erika Saunders’s poems intertwine the sea, stone, space, with a lens always focused on love: “we are the waves / crashing, we are the castle walls / we are both the seal / and the shark stranded there / together on the moonlit beach.” Erika’s poems argue for the interconnectedness of all things. She examines cells with microscopic precision “as cell recognizes cell and pulls / together, tugged by the moon rhythm / of salt tides to rebuild the (w)hole.” And she pulls out her telescope to examine the cosmos: “calcified remains of dying / stars litter the watery surface / like cosmic confetti.” These poems illuminate mystery, and point towards meaning: “If we can translate the murmur / into words, we’ll understand / destiny.”

–Jodi Andrews, Skin Reverberations

Erika Saunders’ poetry collection, Murmuration, is a paean to the gorgeous rushing swoop and torque of organic cycles: the baroque spiraling of starlings in murmuration; the departures and returns of birds in migration; seasonal birth and decay; gestational cycles; the ebb and flow of tides; the push and pull of the human heart. Here, the ecological interconnectedness of life on our shifting planet is celebrated as exquisitely precious, fleeting, precarious, and infinitely creative. This is a wonderful volume, in which Saunders’ attentive presence within small, seemingly ordinary moments seeded in time and place emerges as both an act of grounding and an ecstatic surrender to infinitude.

–Lee Ann Roripaugh, Author of tsunami vs. the fukushima 50