Wound Is the Origin of Wonder

A ravishing volume of poems that explore appetite, desire, and our gratitude for one another and the vanishing world.

Award-winning poet Maya C. Popa suggests that our restless desires are inseparable from our mortality in this pressing and precise collection. In lucid, musically rich poems, she appeals to a dwindling natural world and summons moments from the lives of literary forbearers—Milton’s visit to Galileo, a vase broken by Marcel Proust—unveiling fresh wonder in the unlikely meetings of the past. Popa’s poems dramatize the difficulties of loving a world that is at once rich with beauty and full of opportunities for grief, and reveal that the natural arc of wonder, from astonishment to reflection, more deeply connects us with our humanity.

From “Dear Life”

I have wanted all the world, its beauties

and its injuries; some days,

I think that is punishment enough.

About the Author: Maya C. Popa is the author of American Faith, recipient of the 2020 North American Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Nation, Poetry, and the Paris Review, among other publications. The poetry reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she lives in New York City.