moon moon

July Westhale’s work has an investigative and improvisational quality that makes moon moon an endless surprise. Reading this book is like opening a homunculus that never ends. These poems are funny and strange and compellingly probe at a question Westhale asks: “Does it matter to us more to be understood, or to inhabit?” To explore the tension between comprehension and ownership, connection and possession, especially as it relates to our mistreatment of the natural world, she shifts the frame of our experience to other spaces and realms, so that we might see ourselves anew.
-Bob Hicok, author of Hold and Water Look Away

Reading July Westhale’s moon moon is like looking through a telescope-turned-kaleidoscope. Through this device, Westhale probes what makes a world–showing us that knowing its beauty requires constant shifts, juxtapositions, fragmentations, and repetitions. Westhale shows us a world that is elusive, simultaneous, and ever-changing; but always worthy of our love and care. She writes this book for all of those who have a stake in our world: from the gods above residing on the moon’s moon, all the way to a baby living on earth. Inside the baby, there dwells the earth, its moon, and its moon’s moon.
–Fulla Abdul-Jabbar, author of Who Loves the Sun