Ends of the Earth
University of Alaska Press, Alaska Literary Series (2017)
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“Thoughtful and engaging poems that spread out across the large canvas of experience” — Doug Ramspeck, Los Angeles Review
“Partridge draws from distant roots in literature, philosophy and science, covering Alaskan history and geography, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Walt Whitman, and phrenology in agile leaps of lyric and logic all bound together by a faith that in trying to understand each other, we will find compassion and comfort in chaotic times.” — Sarah Winn, Kenyon Review Online
Praise for Ends of the Earth
"In graceful, near-languorous fashion, Kate Partridge, poet-explorer, engages the reader's desire to know the Unknown's "end," where, (as she writes): "If she can identify all the objects in the sky, she believes in order." We move beyond the state of Alaska and its local aura of "earth's end"--beyond Donne's compass and new and old science-- into the "objects" that swirl in this poet's various imaginative "skies". This earth and its ends are Partridge's new/old terrain--epic to anecdotal--Gilgamesh to neuroscience to her engaging new "field guide," drawn in stunning collage-maps illumined by previous trackers, including the bold cartography of Adrienne Rich. Most blurbs are often repetitive puffery, it's true. But before you dismiss this one-- please follow this guide to "grieving wonder," these poems that follow their own fearless course: "Build temples out of firewood and burn them down."
—Carol Muske-Dukes
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"Kate Partridge’s debut collection of poetry, Ends of the Earth, is wholly original, a work at once breathtakingly new and sincerely aware of and beholden to its forbearers, as a true original should be. The book is epic and intimate, expansive and tender, learned and, at times, delightfully dry in its humor. Partridge is an explorer and in the book’s title poem, she sets the stage for her peregrination to the ends of the earth: “. . .boundaries are sites of inquiry rather than edges/ consistently shifting and fantastical: the potential/ for something else/ greater or more awesome than.”
—Eric Pankey
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"Ends of the Earth is a geography of transitions, a remote cabin with snowy mountains, wild blueberries, not-so-distant bears, a field guide to places where knowing and not knowing meet as creative act. With beauty and humor, Kate Partridge maps the language between daily experience and discovery, ancient literature and 21st century relationships, science and pseudoscience. As you read Partridge's explorations of Whitman and phrenology, run your hands over your head to find where the bumps are. Like the meditative topography of this book, the body, too, is a map of transitions."
—Mel Nichols