{"product_id":"i-am-trying-to-love-the-whole-world","title":"I Am Trying to Love the Whole World","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eIn her lyrical fifth collection,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eI Am Trying to Love the Whole World\u003c\/i\u003e, Jenny Browne fearlessly holds grief without sentimentality and beauty without denial.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eFor nearly a year, Browne began each poem with the line “I am trying to love the whole world,” letting it guide her through loss, love, and survival. The result is a striking meditation on human fragility and the sustaining power of art, even as life—and the world around us—can be made and unmade in an instant.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMoving between tenderness, fierceness, and wry humor, these poems mourn a beloved friend, witness the pandemic, and reflect on the politicization of women’s bodies. Browne delights in a snarky daughter scrolling TikTok, a ghost wearing her best red boots, and the music of Violetta’s aria in\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eLa Traviata\u003c\/i\u003e. Drawing on nature, memory, and human connection, she explores oceans, bones, motherhood, and time itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMultivocal, incantatory, and precise, her work asks what it means to live with loss while remaining open to the world, finding solace in the everyday—“sky blue \/ Mustang paused on the shoulder.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eI Am Trying to Love the Whole World\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“This is a book of grappling after grace, of incantations and linguistic veers, of refutations of easy solace and ‘trying to praise what left us gutted.’ Jenny Browne’s work is fierce and tender all at once, and these poems brim with both loss and beauty as they bear down brilliantly on grief and the forever-failable human heart. This is a book to be awed by and to return to again and again.”\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Matt Donovan, author of\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Dug Up Gun Museum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“All elegies find ways of asking if the choices we have made as humans are sorely deluded or just bearable enough. The poems in Jenny Browne’s\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eI Am Trying to Love the Whole World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003estartle and shift us because they speak to this difficulty of imaginative survival in a manner that feels openly associative, multivocal, and fierce.”\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e—Sandra Lim, author of\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Curious Thing\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Like Emily getting up early to compose verses, like Tennyson mourning Arthur Hallam inordinately, or like someone accidentally telling the truth, we learn here that if you stare at any word long enough it burns. To compose, we learn, is to arrange unequal things, like your laugh and an ambulance, like a thin cardigan of sun, like the varicose afternoons of the horizon herself, like the pained vulva of Killary Harbour.”\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Medbh McGuckian, author of\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Unfixed Horizon: New Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4 style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\" class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe Way We Loved Those Desert Towns\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\"\u003eI am trying to love the whole world\u003cbr\u003ethe way we loved those desert towns\u003cbr\u003epassed through without imagining\u003cbr\u003ewho else we might have been\u003cbr\u003eor broken. The sound ways\u003cbr\u003eof finding water long forgotten\u003cbr\u003esave a dry hump of thunder\u003cbr\u003ethere beyond the orchard\u003cbr\u003ewhere the lush pecans drop.\u003cbr\u003eLet’s make a spell for the return trip,\u003cbr\u003ewhisper   bonefire    easysad    foreverever.\u003cbr\u003eSometimes the past best stay\u003cbr\u003ea distant persistent ringing.\u003cbr\u003eSometimes a country song\u003cbr\u003eabout starting over drifts from\u003cbr\u003einside the rusting sky blue\u003cbr\u003eMustang paused on the shoulder.\u003cbr\u003eIf you can imagine passing someone\u003cbr\u003eon this road, you might also imagine\u003cbr\u003esitting next to it all day then all night\u003cbr\u003etrying to tell the difference\u003cbr\u003ebetween the ones who would feed you\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp; the ones who will eat you.\u003cbr\u003ePecos wind keeps reaping dust\u003cbr\u003efor the last grand Ceiba\u003cbr\u003enot here to save. Tumbleweeds\u003cbr\u003emake such fine refrain.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOA Editions, Ltd.","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48766250189029,"sku":null,"price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Paperback (Signed)","offer_id":48766250221797,"sku":null,"price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48766250254565,"sku":null,"price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/files\/IAmTryingToLoveTheWholeWorld_CVR_RGB_SM.jpg?v=1775759884","url":"https:\/\/shop.boaeditions.org\/products\/i-am-trying-to-love-the-whole-world","provider":"Boa Editions","version":"1.0","type":"link"}