Sage Marshall’s debut poetry collection Echolocation provides a profound and essential perspective on contemporary masculinity, eco-poetics, and Western literature. This sonically charged presentation intricately weaves the landscapes and ecologies of the American West against themes of violence, adolescence, and beauty. Marshall’s critical yet compassionate examination of the brutality of boyhood and prevailing notions of masculinity offers a vital perspective on gender issues in today’s world. His deep attunement with the natural world infuses the collection with moments of clarity and grace amidst the reality of violence and pain. He questions contemporary social conventions while delving into timeless themes of grief, growth, and human connection.
Published October 1, 2024 from Middle Creek Publishing.
Advance Praise
In this series, the body and the landscape are one. The night as well as our bodies are bruised; the fire on the hillside, which is watched like a drive-in movie, ends with ash in our mouths; the forgiveness we have swallowed turns to swallows bursting from deep thickets of grass. This is poetic echolocation. This is a sacred call and response between a writer and all the environments he inhabits.—Alexander Shalom Joseph, author of Our Mother, The Mountain and Broken Light in a Burning Wood
In Echolocation, Sage Marshall has crafted poems of brilliant reflection, finding his way through questions we all must ask of coming into our own, even when answers can be held but briefly. Marshall’s poems are vulnerable and inspired, acutely aware of both the beauty we inherit of the world and the pain we inflict on ourselves and others. This is a remarkable debut. —Erin Block, Author of How You Walk Alone in the Dark, winner of the Colorado Book Award
Tough and bloody, full of the grit of real life, of lives lived close to the land, lives lived in struggle and brotherly competition and the great stakes of father and son relationships, Sage Marshall’s debut, Echolocation, still manages to be a book of deep tenderness, of love and honor and the wisdom of hard years and the natural world.
—Joe Wilkins, author of Thieve and When We Were Birds, winner of the of the Oregon Book AwardSage Marshall’s Echolocation is built by poems of the body and the intensely physical world. For Marshall, everything is supported by blood. From the obvious hunting and fishing to the locker rooms after hockey practice to hiking mountains to walking home from the bar late at night. But even within the momentum of this collection, which often feels as if it’s careening toward collision, Marshall delivers moments without violence where the quiet offers a space to glimpse the relief when a cheek goes unpunched or a duck makes it to the horizon unscathed: “I have fired before / and will again / but today / I stole nothing from the sky.” —Noah Davis, winner of the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize and author of Of This River
To read Sage Marshall’s poetry is to step into a beautiful place of “dank twisted love” that deftly navigates both our natural world and the one of “boys learning to collide.” These poems teach us how to live in a violent world with grace, compassion, and curiosity. —Michael Garrigan, author of River, Amen & Robbing the Pillars
The poems that move me often share a few common traits: They challenge my thinking. They let strong words breathe and flex. They put me in nature. More than a few of the poems in this collection from Sage Marshall—a caring, careful writer and observer of nature—moved me to no end. —Colin Kearns, Editor in Chief of Field & Stream
