Overwinter

Jeremy Pataky's debut collection measures familial and romantic love against the wildness of the far north and the self. Remote settings provide both a solace and challenge where the speaker s aloneness resists loneliness in full, and fully imagined, places. This is not a static vision, though; the present harkens back to a verdant but distant past. Nor is it a silent world. These poems reconcile the natural quiet and sounds of wilderness with the clamor of built environments. Pataky lives this contrast, migrating seasonally between Anchorage and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. These poems bridge the urban and rural, unifying them through an eros that is by turns fevered and serene. The book is haunted by all those the poet has loved, and they survive in the hidden places sculpted by language."