Overview

Unlike most books of poems nowadays, Goodbye, Ice by Lawrence Millman has a strong ecological bias. The book offers a window on the natural world of the Arctic and its tradition-bound indigenous people. Climate change, inevitably, raises its ugly head in many of the poems, but the book itself is a lament not just for the loss of ice, but for the loss of the Arctic itself.

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9781587750311

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"""Lawrence Millman is a true original who takes no prisoners. His poetry does not ask permission of the kind of people who think they know what 'poetry' is, and as a result it is truer to life-real life-than most of what marches under that banner. These poems come from, and speak for, the reality of Earth as it is."" -Paul Kingsnorth, author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist ""Our most perceptive writer on the Earth's icy regions, Millman is at his most lyrical in this lament for a melting world where words are living things, and where the ravaged earth speaks in groans, reminding us that we are part of the natural world, both hubristic creator and greed-blinded destroyer."" -Ryan Murdock, author of Vagabond Dreams ""From polar bears to pointless missionaries, plagues of cruise ships to mosquitoes, eiders to owls to ravens and the people to whom all of these matter, Good- bye, Ice shows as many strands and colors of the polar zones as any Aurora Borealis. You'll rue the warming, yes, but you'll not close the book without laughing too. I love these poems very much."" -Robert Michael Pyle, author of Wintergreen, Chinook & Chanterelle, and Nature Matrix ""I imagine future archaeologists finding wind-chiseled stones in an Inuit graveyard. On each stone is carved a poem from Lawrence Millman's Goodbye, Ice, a book that's equally an epitaph and a celebration for the arctic spirit-world and landscape. Said archeologists would say, 'So this is what happened here...'-and be haunted by it for the rest of their lives."" -Howard Norman, author of The Ghost Clause ""Lawrence Millman is a polar bear of a man-explorer, ethnographer, mycologist. His poems take us into the Arctic wilds, introduce us to its icons, its relics, and its cultural curiosities. They bring you mementoes from the rapidly disappearing cultures of ice. When he prays, 'May the gods of the tundra grant me lichen until I become lichen myself, ' take care. You may become lichen, too."" -Art Goodtimes, author of Looking South to Lone Cone ""What Jacques Cousteau did for the oceans, Millman does for the Arctic, with the same sense of wonder and urgency. Finding beauty and humor in all he sees, he is a prophet in the wilderness. His gentle poems remind us a vengeful wrath awaits us if we don't repent. Never has a prophecy been so palatable. Let his flying shaman, his Inuit, raven, lemming, and bear take you on an exhilarating journey."" -David O. Born, author of Eskimo Education and the Trauma of Social Change ""In these poems Lawrence Millman lets us hear the voices of the North, of people who live across the frozen places telling their own stories and visions, people who accept they are one with all living creatures. Even the planet gets to have its say. The voices suggest that we pay attention, learn how to read our own geography, that we should trust ourselves to 'play with the moon', to become one with our own landscapes."" -Claudia Radmore, editor of Arctic Twilight: Leonard Budgell and Canada's Changing North ""Millman's poems are playful, vulnerable, and magical-celebrating and grieving for our wild, animate, and chaotic world, and in the same breath bringing tundra-wide smiles, belly-deep laughter, and unbounded freedom."" -Michael Morrison"

Lawrence Millman is a true original who takes no prisoners. His poetry does not ask permission of the kind of people who think they know what 'poetry' is, and as a result it is truer to life-real life-than most of what marches under that banner. These poems come from, and speak for, the reality of Earth as it is. -Paul Kingsnorth, author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist Our most perceptive writer on the Earth's icy regions, Millman is at his most lyrical in this lament for a melting world where words are living things, and where the ravaged earth speaks in groans, reminding us that we are part of the natural world, both hubristic creator and greed-blinded destroyer. -Ryan Murdock, author of Vagabond Dreams From polar bears to pointless missionaries, plagues of cruise ships to mosquitoes, eiders to owls to ravens and the people to whom all of these matter, Good- bye, Ice shows as many strands and colors of the polar zones as any Aurora Borealis. You'll rue the warming, yes, but you'll not close the book without laughing too. I love these poems very much. -Robert Michael Pyle, author of Wintergreen, Chinook & Chanterelle, and Nature Matrix I imagine future archaeologists finding wind-chiseled stones in an Inuit graveyard. On each stone is carved a poem from Lawrence Millman's Goodbye, Ice, a book that's equally an epitaph and a celebration for the arctic spirit-world and landscape. Said archeologists would say, 'So this is what happened here...'-and be haunted by it for the rest of their lives. -Howard Norman, author of The Ghost Clause Lawrence Millman is a polar bear of a man-explorer, ethnographer, mycologist. His poems take us into the Arctic wilds, introduce us to its icons, its relics, and its cultural curiosities. They bring you mementoes from the rapidly disappearing cultures of ice. When he prays, 'May the gods of the tundra grant me lichen until I become lichen myself, ' take care. You may become lichen, too. -Art Goodtimes, author of Looking South to Lone Cone What Jacques Cousteau did for the oceans, Millman does for the Arctic, with the same sense of wonder and urgency. Finding beauty and humor in all he sees, he is a prophet in the wilderness. His gentle poems remind us a vengeful wrath awaits us if we don't repent. Never has a prophecy been so palatable. Let his flying shaman, his Inuit, raven, lemming, and bear take you on an exhilarating journey. -David O. Born, author of Eskimo Education and the Trauma of Social Change In these poems Lawrence Millman lets us hear the voices of the North, of people who live across the frozen places telling their own stories and visions, people who accept they are one with all living creatures. Even the planet gets to have its say. The voices suggest that we pay attention, learn how to read our own geography, that we should trust ourselves to 'play with the moon', to become one with our own landscapes. -Claudia Radmore, editor of Arctic Twilight: Leonard Budgell and Canada's Changing North Millman's poems are playful, vulnerable, and magical-celebrating and grieving for our wild, animate, and chaotic world, and in the same breath bringing tundra-wide smiles, belly-deep laughter, and unbounded freedom. -Michael Morrison

Author Information

Writer-ethnographer-mycologist Lawrence Millman has made over 40 trips and expeditions to the Arctic and Subarctic. His 18 books include such titles as Last Places, Northern Latitudes, A Kayak Full of Ghosts, Our Like Will Not Be There Again, Hiking to Siberia, Lost in the Arctic, At the End of the World, The Book of Origins, and Fungipedia. He has written for Smithsonian, National Geographic, Outside, Atlantic Monthly, and The Sunday Times (London). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The author is available for interviews and events, virtual and in person, as social distancing rules allow.

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