Bear Approaches from the Sky

Poetry. California Interest. Winner of the 2013 Orlando Prize for poetry. A second collection from poet Abby Chew explores what it means to live as that animal called human, and how to reemerge from the burrow of personal and family history. A BEAR APPROACHES FROM THE SKY (The Word Works, 2018) pulls the reader into a family saga that becomes archetypal in its occupation of loneliness, but the poems also generate connection to our shared life on this planet and our many diverse and struggling families of origin. Says Broc Rossell, I love this book for the way it roughs me up. Emily Wilson adds, With acute, earth-bound diction and windstained tones, Abby Chew's poems evoke a sensory world that is not quite human, one that feels remnant of our more richly animal past, when we were 'never without the hunting teeth.' Her composite, self-possessed voices--half man, half coyote; half crow, half bear--lope and swoop their waste spaces, smelling the air, catching the scents of prey and danger.