To graft something is to fix two things together like tree branches or skin in order to heal or grow something new, and appropriately the poems in Graft attempt to bring things together—ideas, cultures, and people. Inspired by the word itself—which originates from the Old Norse groftr, meaning “to dig”—the poems dig away at things, trying to find a truth or an answer or a lost person. What is found is often not quite that which was sought. This collection brings together unlikely pairs: science and magical thinking, fact and fiction, myth and history, as well as more predictable pairings with less predictable outcomes.
