The Light We Cannot See

By Anne Casey

Anne Casey's The Light We Cannot See presents a mother's concern for her children's futures and an exile daughter's ache within a globe scarred by climate upheaval, pandemics, and unrest, weaving ecocritical sorrow with a stubborn whisper of hopeful humanity.


""Anne Casey's The Light We Cannot See aches with loveliness even as it warns against humanity's pervasive damage to the environment. Poem after elegant, ecocritical poem showcases Casey's grasp of the environmental crises we have created in the Anthropocene--whether it's the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef ('Where once she danced'), the Australian wildfires ('This is not a drill'), or the rising ocean levels ('At sea'). But she interweaves each poem with such a profound beauty that we cannot help but to remember that at least with poetry, humans have created something good. This is a work that breaks your heart with its almost elegiac approach to ecology and the Earth--and yet, Casey offers that scintilla of hope that with human change, all is not lost ('Either way, the fact remains'). A wonderful and staggering collection of poetry."" -- JC REILLY, managing editor of Atlanta Review, author of What Magick May Not Alter

""Anne Casey's poetry is a revelation. Her work effortlessly moves between the metaphysical and the sensual, the concrete and the lyrical, the inspirational and the earthly. Encountering The Light We Cannot See is to encounter a whole range of human experience evoked with poignancy, poise and grace. It's the sort of work that lodges within and stays vivid long after reading."" -- JOHN TAGUE, managing editor of Griffith Review

"Anne Casey's brilliant new collection of poetry is her best work yet -- lyrical, experimental, musical and technically sophisticated. Casey engages passionately with urgent global, local and personal issues, from climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic to exile, motherhood, loss and acceptance. Writing in the tradition of Boland, Heaney and Yeats, she exhibits a mastery of form and subject, crafting beautiful, irrefutable appeals to our emotions, ethics and logic." -- NATHANAEL O'REILLY, poet, associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, author of (Un)belonging, Preparations for Departure and Distance

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1912561972
• ISBN13: 9781912561971
• Release Date: April 2022
• Publisher: Salmon Poetry
• Length: 98 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.9" x 9.0"