Geometry of the Restless Herd

Sophie Cabot Black

Forthcoming May 2024

In Geometry of the Restless Herd, Sophie Cabot Black stages a powerful allegory for the social and political realities of our human world. Through hauntingly metaphysical poems set within a sheepherder’s domain, Black conjures fields of harvest and resurrection, of wagers and outcomes—animals to keep, and those to send to slaughter. Here, both singular voices and polyvocal choruses ask, Who has the real power, and how are we to survive the violence we do to one another?

Paperback: $17.00 list price

Bookshop Amazon
Receive this book as a gift when you donate.

ISBN: 9781556596926

Format: Paperback

The Pale

Maybe I find what isn’t
there; what the mind can do

does not serve: now, here,
ever, and so the outline moves;

night asks for it,
a night gotten through

where I could not see
until some small morning

of breath, hoof, and blood
as the ewe refuses

to rely
on my vigilance: the watcher,

the watched,
and what comes between—

in the left grass
of winter she sleeps

under a bush,
the hush

stitches itself
to itself

and strict the moon
who would only

send back
what she was given

About the Author

Sophie Cabot Black has three poetry collections from Graywolf Press, The Misunderstanding of Nature, which received the Poetry Society of America’s First Book Award, The Descent, which received the 2005 Connecticut Book Award, and most recently, The Exchange.  Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. 

Read more