AWESOME EARTH

Concrete poetry on geological themes, shaped to fit inside digital collage images of their subjects.

“The Earth is / an artist, at work every / day, with powerful tools that / come into play,” writes Graham in a round-bodied excerpt that caps a world-spanning tour of landform types from “Continents” to “Stalactites,” “Stalagmites,” and sandstone “Arches.” Though limited to a little over 20 examples, the author does find room for “Glacier” and “Hoodoos,” while “Cave” is more concerned with starry bioluminescent glowworms than the rocky chambers they light up. Still, her simply written observations often mix sonorous language (“Shape-shifter, / dune-drifter, sand-sifter, / hot desert winds build billowy dunes”) with descriptions of process; while appreciating the poems as lyrics, readers will also effortlessly absorb information about continental drift, erosion, how the three kinds of rock are formed, and other geological basics. Except for a cross-sectional slice of our planet showing layers from surface to core, most of the forms Garcia portrays in her strongly modeled land- and seascapes are at least loosely based on specific locales that are identified in the author’s photo-strewn closing notes on each feature.

Highly selective, but as a first introduction to landforms, this rocks.