A Treatise on Stars

An ethereal new collection that is “visceral with intellection” (David Lau)

Winner of the Bollingen Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award

A Treatise on Stars extends Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's intensely phenomenological poetics to the fiery bodies in a "field of heaven...outside spacetime." Long, lyrical lines map a geography of interconnected, interdimensional intelligence that exists in all places and sentient beings. These are poems of deep listening and patient waiting, open to the cosmic loom, the channeling of daily experience and conversation, gestalt and angels, dolphins and a star-visitor beneath a tree. Family, too, becomes a type of constellation, a thought "a form of organized light." All of our sense are activated by Berssenbrugge's radiant lines, giving us a poetry of keen perception grounded in the physical world, where "days fill with splendor, and earth offers its pristine beauty to an expanding present."

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing and grew up in Massachusetts. She is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Empathy, Nest, and I Love Artists. A Lit Cloud, her recent collaboration with the artist Kiki Smith, was published by Galerie Lelong in 2012. She lives in New York City and northern New Mexico.

• Publisher: ‎New Directions; 1st edition (February 25, 2020)
• Language: English
• Paperback: ‎96 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎0811229386
• ISBN-13: ‎978-0811229388
• Item Weight: ‎7.1 ounces
• Dimensions: ‎8.5 x 0.4 x 7.7 inches