Burnt Island

D. Nurkses Burnt Island explores tragedy both grand and intimate in city and country in our own troubled moment and across the greater scope of geological time. Arranged in three suites of lucid often heart-wrenching verse the book begins with a city under siege in a group of poems that becomes a subtle homage to New York after 9/11a metaphorical burnt island where diggers doze on their shovels citizens contribute bottles of water M&Ms and casseroles to recovery efforts and survivors mesmerized by the photos of the missing compare them scar by scar with the faces of the living. Nurkse then takes up the journey of a couple starting again in nature at a specific place called Burnt Island where the elements instruct them seeming to mirror their conflicts and strife. Finally in a charming and profound series of poems centered on marine ecology he finds the infinite in the infinitesimally small and offers us in sparkling mysterious verses the strange comfort that comes with observing the life of the ocean.we are like youbecause we are born by the billionsand float into the open ocean. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .we live another secondor much less less than a blinkuntil the code comes to know itselfand the mind dreams another mindthat will survive itthere in the bright curtain of spray. (from The Granite Coast)