The Desert Speaks to the Dreamer by Deborah Barrett

The predominant mode of Deborah Barrett’s elegant and aching collection of poems, The Desert Speaks to the Dreamer, is elegy.  This is a poetry that mourns the fleeting world – the death of a parent and the death of a species, the loss of a house to floodwaters and the loss of a child to adoption – with an eye for crystalline detail and a sure sense of formal possibility.  Yet the emotional resonance of these fine poems goes far beyond simple lament; they chronicle and question and celebrate even as they weep.

–Peter Kline, Deviants, Lecturer in Creative Writing, Stanford University and University of San Francisco

The Desert Speaks to the Dreamer is aptly named—it’s a marvelous collection of poems about how the natural world is speaking to us as the oceans rise and the atmosphere warms, with “[t]he smells of pine and fir, sounds of soft talk, / with trees whispering in a secret code / encroaching humans cannot comprehend.”  Deborah Barrett translates nature’s murmurings—her soul data—into poignant, memorable poems that speak to the crisis and beauty of the Anthropocene.

–Greg Wrenn, Centaur, Assistant Professor of English – Creative Writing James Madison University