Selected by Mark Doty for the 2019 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize
In Not For Luck, Derek Sheffield ushers us into the beauty and grace that comes from giving attention to the interconnections that make up our lives. In particular, these poems explore a father’s relationship with his daughters, which is rooted in place and time. There is tenderness and an abiding ecological consciousness, but also loss and heartache, especially about environmental degradation. We are invited to listen to the languages of other beings. Through encounters with a herd of deer, a circle of salmon in a mountain creek, two bears on a stretch of coast, a river otter, and a shiny-eyed wood rat, these poems offer moments of wonder that celebrate our place as one species among many on our only earth.
ContentsTimid as Any Herd AnimalStewards at WorkThe Scientists Gather at Mount St. HelensAprilAubadeThe Wren and the Jet at a Research Forest near Fort Knox, Seventy-One Years since the Bombing of Hiroshima, Eight Months since the Photo of a Three-Year-Old Syrian Boy Facedown on a Turkish Beach, His Red Shirt, His Blue ShortsFish Like ThesehitchTraveling Again through the DarkGood GirlDaughter and Father in WinterThe Math of TwoBedtime StoryThe Science of Spirit LakeFor Those Who Would SeeEmissariesEmergencyFirst GradeHer CallingMonstersWe Could SeeThe Skookum IndianIn Nez Perce Country with KevinA True Account of Wood-Getting from up the ChumstickC-3POWhat HappensIt Wasn’t the LaundryExactly What Needs SayingAbortion WishJohn Carter of Mars versus the VoidNotes, DescendingA Song for TodayIdaho, MaybeContextual EducationStill TimeWhat Will Keep UsThe Empty Road Full of PeopleThe Nature of Time Was What They Were Talking AboutAt the Log Decomposition Site in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a VisitationA Moment AgoHer YarnOpening the CurtainsTotalityMiddle SchoolA Response to a Pair of Forest PlotsShe Gathers RocksThe SecondsHer PresentAcknowledgments
Derek Sheffield is the author of Through the Second Skin, finalist for the Washington State Book Award. He is coeditor of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, poetry editor of Terrain.org, and a professor of English at Wenatchee Valley College.