Sandra Simonds: Burning Oracle

Description

Wesleyan University Press, paperback

Publication Date: February 17, 2026

Publisher Marketing:

Burning Oracle is a visionary, book-length poem told from the fractures of a world on fire where myth, memory, and contemporary life collide. Cassandra–seer, mother, survivor–wanders through forests of digital noise and historical trauma, her voice both ancient and urgently new. At the heart of the poem is a pilgrimage to the grave of poet Paul Celan where she traces personal loss within the wider context of inherited trauma–particularly the Holocaust–and seeks meaning in the act of remembering. As floods rise and fires rage, the personal and historical ignite a mythic voice. Through the commonplace of stained dresses, shattered screens, and supermarket aisles, Cassandra encounters figures like Goya, Reynard the fox, and Celan himself, weaving their stories into an intertextual, image-rich landscape. Burning Oracle is a feminist reckoning, a personal mythography, and a testament to the power of poetry to animate the archive of history, memory, and everyday life.

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