Eva Saulitis |
I ran across a powerful essay by Eva Saulitis today in Orion Magazine. Here’s a taste:
We have no dominion over what the world will do to us, all of us. What the earth will make of our tinkering and abuse can be modeled by computers but is, in the end, beyond our reckoning, our science. Nature is not simply done to. Nature responds. Nature talks back. Nature is willful. We have no dominion over the wild darkness that surrounds us. It is everywhere, under our feet, in the air we breathe, but we know nothing of it.
Saulitis is in the midst of a struggle with returning cancer, and the via negativa this leads her to walk is one we all might acknowledge, if not willingly seek out.
I have to say that this essay led me to swell my personal wish list by adding her book of poems, Many Ways to Say It. Her prose style tells me she’s a poet at heart.