M. Bartley Seigel was and will always be a poet laureate of the Upper Peninsula. In his latest poetry collection, he writes of bodies against the backdrop of dark, cold waters and a brutal but impossibly beautiful landscape. Each word rises from the page etched, carefully, in stone. Seigel has crafted an engrossing and deeply immersive book—part love song, part monument, part elegy, wholly unforgettable.
~Roxane Gay, bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger
We might call Seigel's poems 'sacred holdings— / little haloed echoes, etched in gemstone and antler.' But that would miss the gut ache cached in these 'feral voices,' the 'dark thing' that 'hides behind the heavenly.' This haunting collection—part elegy, part praise song—is all search. The author reminds us we must first hunger before we can relish each unlikely feast.
~Kimberly Blaeser, author of Ancient Light and former Wisconsin Poet Laureate
Parts of our country have often seemed to exist beyond the reaches of art and literature, and the great forest of northern Michigan is one of those places. In M. Bartley Seigel's remarkable collection, the poet braids up language and landscape, giving voice to the spirit of a place—with its frozen swamps, wildlife, militias, poverty, its culture, its delicacy, and its beauty. With formal dexterity and memorable musicality, Seigel has made an important contribution to our understanding of what it feels like to fully reside in a location beautifully contended with by the poetic imagination.
~Mark Wunderlich
This collection pulls you into saturated, secluded intimacy with the paradoxically iconic and unknown Upper Peninsula of Michigan. M. Bartley Seigel is hospitably at home in this, offering existential, domestic, and sociopolitical meditations with the UP and Lake Superior as his scenic background and as his total reason for being; as the air and water they breathe and swim in, metaphorically and literally as Seigel does on every other page, floating 'out beyond the tree line's reflection to a place we know cannot be depended upon. Here we release our buoys from their chains so we might display our illuminated objects.' Ripples of interiority meeting real exterior space: that is what we need in a poetry of self and place. You'll find that here—one keen voice, sounding this deep corner of the Great Lakes.
~Moheb Soliman, author of HOMES
Near the end of this new collection, Seigel writes: 'all soft / procedure and steel // will.' It is just one moment of many where these deeply resonant poems become an eloquent landscape similar to the one in which they were made. To read In the Bone-Cracking Cold is to dwell in a kind of place few will know as intimately as Seigel does. Thank goodness he has made these, by turns, tender and flinty poems.
~Alison Swan, author of A Fine Canopy (Wayne State University Press) and Fresh Water
In the bone-cracking cold we shiver and search our minds for memories and images to warm our souls. M. Bartley Seigel's new book calls to mind those moments when we see things with icy clarity. Of the many glistening lines to nourish readers in his new collection, one of my favorites is: 'In rolling waves of laughter, we rise to greet whatever sky awaits.' Seigel is a poet not afraid to greet the sky, the seasons, the stars, and all the brilliant new poems that he brings to life. Reading his work is an introduction to the northland he loves and the honesty he demands of himself. May his blessed poems continue to drift up for years to come. Ezhi-ozhibii'ang giwii-giiwemin. He has a way of leading us home.
~Margaret Noodin, author of What the Chickadee Knows and Weweni (both Wayne State University Press)
