Cries from the Ark

A pitch-perfect debut and a call to act in the service of Earth through radiant attention. Humankind, at present, has breached floodgates that have only been breached before in ancient stories of angry gods, or so far back on geologic and biological timelines as to seem more past than past. Against this catastrophic backdrop (at the end of consolations, at the high-water mark), and equipped with a periscopic eye and a sublime metaphorical reach, poet Dan MacIsaac has crowded his debut vessel with sloths and auks, mummified remains and bumbling explorers, German expressionists and Neolithic cave-painters. With the predominant “I” of so many poetic debuts almost entirely absent, Cries from the Ark is catalogue and cartography of our common mortal—and moral—lot.