A Natural History of Unnatural Things by Zachari Logan (signed)
A Natural History of Unnatural Things
by Zachari Logan
Paperback (poetry)
8.5 x 5.5 inches88 pages
Release Date: September 2021
ISBN 9781989274545
"A microscopic and intense view of the sometimes invisible and ignored parts of the world we inhabit. Peering into cities and our place within them, the poet searches for meaning after the death of his father, and reflects on his own experience growing up queer in a prairie city.
At times intimate and diaristic, at others raw and abrasive, Logan’s poems insistently blur the boundaries between reality and dreamscape, drawing the reader deeper into a richly evocative, perceptual realm. Line after line, each poem weaves a web of alternative relativities where human and non-human are enmeshed, inescapably caught in awesome interdependency. Recurring figures, circumstances, and conversational fragments outline an existentialist journey where materiality exudes desire. Logan’s ability to tease the numinous out of the mundane is only one of the many gifts pressed between the pages of this book. As time and space collapse into a universe of visionary landscapes, one becomes aware that Logan’s poetry belongs to the kind that forever changes the reader’s perspective on the world. An experimental take on romantic post-humanism, A Natural History of Unnatural Things has its roots firmly planted in the dirt as its tendrils soar towards the sky, where waxy blooms and nectarine delights remind us that every minute in life is well worth savoring."
—Giovanni Aloi, author of Lucian Freud Herbarium (2019, Prestel) and Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene (2017: Columbia University Press)
"Poetry and visual art have an intimate relationship, and the brilliant artist Zachari Logan demonstrates just how magnificent the exchange of imagery can be in his stunning debut poetry collection, A Natural History of Unnatural Things. In Logan’s hands, the imprint of a moth wing on a napkin, or a loose tooth, or a cast-off cat claw in an ashtray can have heart-wrenching, macrocosmic ramifications. Combining the natural with the human-made, these poems become assemblages as complex as the horticultural collages of Mary Delany that Logan reveres. A Natural History of Unnatural Things reminds us that poetry comes from the kaleidoscopic imagination, yet it is Logan’s life experiences that ground the wisdom of these always unpredictable, sumptuously precise, unflinchingly observed poems."
—Molly Peacock, author of The Paper Garden, Flower Diary and The Analyst: Poems.
