Author Description

This is a new collection of poetry by Olympia Sibley, inspired by college teaching. It is unusual almost to the point of being unique in its tight focus on a profession, zooming in on the situation of teaching and learning. The context is academic, but the concerns are personal and ethical, and the poems are sharp-eyed but warm-hearted responses to situations that arise within the context of instruction, principally at the community college level. Also uncharacteristic is the inclusion of a significant number of occasional poems, written in response to specific events, or to mark particular occasions - the start of school, the retirement of a colleague, the triumph of a student, or a contemporary tragedy that bears upon the life of the college. This gives Olympia Sibley's book a sense of concrete immediacy and freshness, and her poems feel precise and well-earned - observations, as it were, from the front lines of teaching. As such, the collection as a whole reflects a triumph of ethos, and a winsome meditation upon the moral enormity of what one is engaged in when teaching.Whether humorous, tragic, or touching, these poems speak to the responsibility that we have for tending to one another and seeking out the best in one another. A book for all those who are engaged in learning or teaching, or who just believe that art should still have something to say about duty, friendship, and compassion for others."Teaching is given an edgy contemporary update in these cleverly constructed and keenly felt poems of our moment. Olympia Sibley has been paying attention, tempering anxiety with meter and form, and teaching her heart out. The result is a book that she was meant to write--offhanded and literary, surprising and inevitable." - Edward Hirsch, author of nine books of poetry including, The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems (2010), and Gabriel: A Poem (2014).