This masterful debut reveals for each reader new depths of nature, self, family, and world by opening our tiniest and most intimate perceptions. Colburn’s poetics balances image with absence, silence with sound. These elegant poems take on the questions of our day: can we have our sweet domestic lives when the life of the planet hangs in the balance? What does it mean to create and nurture a new human being in this perilous age? The poet Chase Twichell wrote: "Spare, brilliant, and open-hearted, these poems do what we most need art to do in this perilous age: they show how the mind invents both itself and its world, and thus where our responsibility lies. This is a book that will reward both readers of poetry and those seeking insight into suffering and resilience. An exhilarating read." The poet Jericho Brown wrote: "Nadia Colburn’s The High Self follows the life of a mind as it becomes more and more aware of threats that mean the end of the natural world, “And when the words came: O Land of the very-seen:/alive and green: how even the hills were /conspirators.” And yet these are love poems that call out to one whom the speaker hopes can inhabit that very same world, “O: little one: all this that is not mine/to give you, what will I give you?” What a tender book! What an example of how to maintain tenderness while telling the truth!"
https://nadiacolburn.com/the-high-shelf/