Sad Animal

Joshua MicKinney, winner of the first John Ridland Poetry Prize, is the author of four previous poetry collections: Small Sillion (Parlor Press, 2019), Mad Cursive (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2012), The Novice Mourner, winner of the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize (Bear Star Press, 2005), and Saunter, winner of the Contemporary Poetry Series Competition (University of Georgia, 2002). Professor Emeritus of English at California State University, Sacramento, he co-edits the online ecopoetics journal, Clade Song.

"Joshua McKinney is a visionary of the intervals and of the interstices. His eye magnifies those last, fleeting splendors of our perishing earth and perishing republic with genuine love and with the grace notes of regret. In Sad Animal, clarity becomes consolation and candor a true companionship. I'm not quite sure that we deserve these beautiful poems, but I am infinitely grateful for them."

-Donald Revell, author of White Campion and Canandaigua

"A citizen of our perplexed world and its 'brightest dark revelation,' Joshua McKinney opens to all that he encounters-whether grief, environmental devastation, love, or even the absurdity of a faculty meeting-with a steadfast attention leavened with humor and, yes, sometimes irreverence."

 -Elizabeth Robinson, author of Excursive and Thirst & Surfeit

"Talking is what the human does, but all of nature must be part of our conversation, and it is very much our turn to listen, even to the corpse flower, even to the white silence drifting to the eaves of houses. Even as the human is the saddest of animals, we are, as is this book, capable of hope and laughter and pleasure in this world. In fact, a lesson of this book is that it is our duty to feel pleasure, hopeful and devoured." 

­-Bin Ramke, author of Light Wind Light Light and

   Earth on Earth