Disquiet is a collection of poems that utilizes natural phenomena?a bright beach, a fallen tree limb, the weight of gravity?to evoke and reflect upon memory and human experience. The poems are structurally innovative, each shaped around a central axis as they trace the speaker's growth from childhood to adulthood. Acute observations resonate throughout the book as its focus shifts from the natural world to the world of the made?the grocery cart or pie-case or microscope?to the world of visual art, and then back. The poems are subtly braided together in a way reminiscent of the invisible bonds that unite snowflakes or cells.

Disquiet is John Witte's fourth book of poetry and his second book in the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, and numerous anthologies. The recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in Eugene, where he teaches at the University of Oregon.

I. ilk

Kinglet

Fledgling

His Kite

Paper Plane

The Me

Shiba Onko

Sarge

Phantom

Just This Train

Saturn

The Roach

Ornithology

Nest

Touching the Animal

Aubade

The Bumblebee

Mind Over Matter

Snails

Cicadas

Heirloom

Pie Case

Microscope

Wind

II. clay

Floaters

Going the Distance

It So

Then One Morning

Love and Life

Grocery Cart

Riddle

Cesium-137

Frogman

What Began

Seizure

Fireflies

At the War Memorial

Crossword

Oxblood

Gravity

The Will

Who Knew

The Widower

Grief

Pumice

Instead

When You Come to Lethe

III. kiln

Sonata

The Surgeon and the Poet

Scabsong

Apology to My Left Hand

Jesus and the Splinter

Lincoln

Leaving the Museum

After Yoshitoshi

Napoleon's Bath

Saint-Remy Asylum

O

Y

Ask

Burning the Book

Ginkgo

Vespers

Wrestling the Angel

The Spider

Butterfly

Acknowledgments

About the Author