Wound is the Origin of Wonder

<p><b><i>I can&rsquo;t undo all I have done to myself,<br>what I have let an appetite for love do to me.<br><br>I have wanted all the world, its beauties<br>and its injuries; some days,<br>I think that is punishment enough.</i></b><br><br><i>Wound is the Origin of Wonder</i> introduces UK readers to the work of a rapidly rising star in American poetry. Maya C. Popa is a naturally gifted poet, lucidly engaged with the most profound questions we face in our collective responsibilities and our relations with each other. She writes with love and wonder of a world poised at a perilous moment: &ldquo;My children, will they exist by the time / it&rsquo;s irreversible?&rdquo; she asks. &ldquo;Will they live / astonished at the thought of ice / not pulled from the mouth of a machine?&rdquo; Popa takes seriously the poet&rsquo;s duty to pay attention, to seek what Seamus Heaney called &ldquo;the images... adequate to our predicament&rdquo;. To read her poems is to pause again and again at the precision of imagery, breadth of ideas, and the warmth and generousness of her lyric voice.</p>