There Are STILL WOODS
hila ratzabi
Paperback • 5.5” x 8.5” • 104 pages • $16
September 6, 2022 • ISBN
978-1-7356783-8-2
Nautilus Book Award gold winner in poetry
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National Indie Excellence Award Finalist
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Nautilus Book Award gold winner in poetry • National Indie Excellence Award Finalist •
There Are Still Woods is a radiant appraisal of life at the precipice of climate crisis and a haunting elegy for all we stand to lose. Through alternating lenses, from the speculative to the spiritual, from motherhood to science to mythology, Hila Ratzabi looks out at our wounded but vibrant planet and the animal experience of living on it. These poems bear witness to the force and fragility of the natural world and grapple with the complexities of being a human in that landscape: being implicated, vulnerable, humbled, dazzled. These poems are ways of framing and enduring loss, personal and collective and cultural, real and potential and anticipated. They impart a heightened appreciation for the solid and fleeting beauty that surrounds us. Here is an ode to the earth, a vision of its end, a celebration of its endurance, an aching and eloquent plea for intercession on its behalf. Ratzabi’s first collection is a howl, a prayer, a premonition, a reawakening, and an urgent call to action.
Go outside.
Find a patch of grass, sand, dirt.
Sit, kneel, place a hand or just
A finger to the soft earth.
Feel it pulse back.
audiobook
“A marvelous rendering of a world that is both known and incomprehensible. . . . Ratzabi offers her readers an ambitious yet intimate vision, threaded by faith, nature, art, and family [that] requires us to hold the earth and our mortality in a vulnerable reckoning, insisting that our lives are inseparable from a greater force, which might be love.”
—Rachel Eliza Griffiths, author of Seeing the Body
“Hila Ratzabi’s beautiful collection walks us through the hurricanes and melting ice caps of our late Anthropocene. . . . Her poems ache with environmental grief, with apostrophes of Arctic ice, with the joy of loving even in a burning world.”
—Traci Brimhall, author of Our Lady of the Ruins
“Hila Ratzabi’s lyrics revitalize myth through an uncannily prescient subjectivity, a rare sense of the planet’s aliveness. Her poetry is embodied, never pretentious, and imbued with great dignity and sometimes amazing insight. Her voice, likewise, is charismatic, challenging, yet infinitely relatable. Such a gifted poet.”
—Ariana Reines, author of A Sand Book
“This collection’s power lies in its minimalism, carefully structured couplets, and variety of poetic forms. . . . For those interested in climate change and its consequences, as well as ecopoetics, this collection is a must-read.”
Press & Prizes
Gold winner, 2023 Nautilus Book Award in poetry
Finalist, 17th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards
Interview: Speaking of Marvels blog, July 2024
Included in CLMP’s recommended reading list for Jewish American Heritage Month, May 2024
Terrain.org interview: “Sacred Reciprocity: A Conversation on Jewish Ecopoetry” (Elizabeth Jacobson, February 2024)
Extended local news feature: “Oak Park poet offers words for troubling times” (January 2024)
Featured in Orion Magazine’s “14 Recommended Poetry Collections for Winter 2022”
“[T]o go outside sometimes and consider the world as it is, right now, without metaphor or embellishment, this can be a kind of magic too. The stripped-down, clear, and present lyrics in Hila Ratzabi’s There Are Still Woods transform me with just this kind of magic. Despite her willingness to speak directly of horrors that can’t be ignored, reading the poems in this book, I am aghast at the splendid goodness and beauty that is still all around.”
—Orion poetry editor Camille T. Dungy
Reviewed in The Adroit Journal, January 2023
“By now the world is full of ecopoetry, but poets of Hila Ratzabi’s caliber don’t turn up often. . . . Ratzabi positions herself as an observer, especially as a listener, in the space where individual consciousness gives way to a sensing of life in all its forms. These poems are the product of deep thought and skilled crafting, and especially of profound feeling. . . . Hila Ratzabi has an urgent message for her fellow humans, and it comes through loud and clear.”
—Anne-Adele Wight, The Adroit Journal
Mentioned in Poets & Writers feature story “Start Dreaming: A Sea of Ideas for the Year of Writing Ahead,” January/February 2023 print issue: “Twelve Poems to Compel a Poet” by Anne-Adele Wight
Included in Barnard Magazine’s featured publications, fall 2022
Small Press Distribution poetry bestseller, September and October 2022 and January 2023
About the Author
Hila Ratzabi’s poetry has been published in Narrative, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Adroit Journal, The Normal School, About Place, and elsewhere and has been anthologized in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. She is the author of the chapbook The Apparatus of Visible Things. The recipient of numerous fellowships, including the Willapa Bay AiR and the Crater Lake National Park residencies, she also served as editor-in-chief and poetry editor of Storyscape Literary Journal and holds an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently the director of communications at North Shore Congregation Israel and lives in Oak Park, Illinois, with her partner and two children. Photo by Paul Goyette.
ABOUT THE COVER
This painting by artist Nikki Lindt is part of a series called Solastalgia that explores personal memory and feelings of loss associated with environmental change.
Book companion playlist
Music curated by the author to accompany the collection
