June in Eden

SometimesJune in Edenoccupies a garden in a wild landscape. Other times, we re given a terrain where the coveted tree is one that hides a cell tower, where lungs are likened to ATMs and prayers are sent via text message. Rosalie Ruth Moffett s debut collection of poetry, June in Eden, questions the human task of naming in a time where there are new kinds of war that keep / changing the maps, where little mistakes preyingorpraying, for instance are easily made. The heart of this book is an obsession with language, its slippages and power, what to do when faced with the loss of it. Ruth, says our speaker, is a kind of compassion / nobody wants anymore the surviving half / of the pair of words isruthless. There is, throughout this collection, a dark humor, but one that belies a tenderness or wonder, our human need to love the world / we made and all its shadows.
Rosalie Moffett sJune in Edengives us a speaker bewildered by and in awe of the world: both the miraclesandfailures of technology, medicine, and imagination. These darkly humorous poems are works of grief and wonder and give us a landscape that looks, from some angles, like paradise.
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