Poetry
What’s Left to Us by Evening
How does one live in a world that is both beautiful and broken—a world of cherry blossoms and gun violence, fellowship and political enmity, plague and rebirth? What’s Left to Us by Evening, David Ebenbach’s unsparing and timely new poetry collection, examines the obligation—and privilege—of carrying it all.
"There’s something reassuring about the way David Ebenbach writes about even the most troubling issues of our time. His poems, often deceptively gentle, offer a kind of tender good humor born of long-suffering patience."
—Ron Charles, Washington Post
"'The world is on its way to you' writes David Ebenbach, and the world in these pages is one made of equal parts grit and tenderness. It’s a world of work, violence, politics, and little apocalypses, but also singing, birdwatching, prayer, and flowers bursting into bloom. At one point, a 'worker lowers / his bag of tools / through the cherry blossoms'—and this might be an apt metaphor for the perspective of this evocative book: behind the world’s tough machinery is an undeniable beauty, and these poems are made by a poet skilled enough to help us see it."
—Matthew Olzmann
Some Unimaginable Animal
In his much-anticipated second poetry collection, David Ebenbach addresses the full scope of the human condition—past, present, and future. Exploring the vast sweep of history, from our ancient evolutionary origins to our future archaeological remains, Ebenbach’s deceptively light-handed poems penetrate to the core of what it means to be human, a brief but exquisite being, full of appetites both healthy and harmful.
“[Ebenbach] has a big voice that includes everybody with wry love....It’s rare to have observation and insight so deliciously prepared that you feel everything is going to be alright. That’s why you keep reading” – Grace Cavalieri, The Washington Independent Review of Books
"Must-read poetry": "A funny, tender, inviting collection, whose traits come from Ebenbach’s gifts of storytelling....Ebenbach takes us into his poems, and these are welcome journeys." –Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions
“Ebenbach is a seeker and seer, steeped in Jewish tradition and, like Walt Whitman, a poet who so loves the world, with its griefs, mysteries, and joys, that he teaches us to love the world with him.” – Jesse Lee Kercheval
We Were the People Who Moved
"In We Were the People Who Moved, David Ebenbach takes the reader on a journey across America,” says author Jesse Lee Kercheval. “This is a journey you will be grateful for having taken, a book that will stay with you long after the last poem.” In these poems, we wander under the “fathomless sky” of the Midwest, ride out extreme weather and constant construction in Mid-Atlantic cities, “drive the landscape/at illegal speeds,” find our way to airports and shuttered train stations, and sit at the feet of monuments. We discover that, on the one hand, “you can’t choose your place”; on the other, the sky can become a “sudden/open hand.” Author Kelly Cherry says of the collection, “Poem by poem, Ebenbach’s new collection transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. The result is a book of continual brilliance.”
“We Were The People Who Moved is smart, lyrical, and full of insight. Spiritual observations disguise themselves in plainspoken humor, and intellectualism gives way to intimacy. This is a collection for re-reading, a book to be dog-eared, underlined, and loved.” – Anya Groner, New Orleans Review
“This is a powerful perception of America with intensity of language and lightness of tone.” – Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books
