Monique Ferrell reviews
The Book of Dirt
by Nicole Santalucia

In every way, Nicole Santalucia’s The Book of Dirt is a reckoning. It is a reckoning with and against so many of our ideas, beliefs, systems, and constructs: old and irrelevant tropes about identity and orientation; acts of violence; the staking of claim and possession over neighborhoods and flesh; age-old battles with the human self and personal weakness; and our nation’s politics. But, it is also a culling together of feeling. So much feeling—both righteous and questioning. The Book of Dirt reflects the urgency of our now—the certainty of knowing who one is and what one believes, coupled with the deep worry that the soul of the world is up for grabs. One is constantly on tenterhooks, as the collection forbids complacency, demanding that you sit in your uncomfortableness. From start to finish, it takes the reader on a much-needed journey, a collection that must be read again and again: under different lights, in different rooms, when mourning, when healing, while protesting, as regimes and patterns fall away, during revolution and, especially, during the hopeful renaissance that follows. It is meaningful. Of Consequence. Brilliantly written. Passionate. It is truth. All who read poetry know we live in a world uneasily straddling what lies between ebb and flow, give and take. What Nicole Santalucia’s The Book of Dirt does is showcase an important blueprint of how poetry can be used to find balance and to help us fight on—until there is meaning.  

Nicole Santalucia is the author of The Book of Dirt (NYQ Books), Spoiled Meat (Headmistress Press), and Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press). Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, and other places. She teaches at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

Monique Ferrell’s writing has appeared in myriad noted publications: Reed Magazine, American Poetry Review, North American Review, Antioch Review, and Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song, among others. She has penned three poetry collections, including the award-winning Attraversiamo (NYQ Books). Her fourth collection Sweet Queen on Fire is forthcoming.