Fifteen years ago, Lola Haskins stepped out of her house and was so struck by the fact that she knew almost nothing about the multitudes living in the air around her and in the earth under her feet that she spent the next many years interviewing entomologists and reading every secondary source she could get her hands on. Like Zeros, Like Pearls is the glorious result of that exploration.
The poetry in Pearls exhibits all the sharpness of eye and soulful sensitivity that have marked Haskins’ fourteen previous collections. Within it, you’ll find a wide range of insects—bees to beetles, mantises to ants, ladybugs to cicadas, and fireflies to butterflies, to name a few—each story with its own heart-felt exploration. Furthermore, since everything in the book has been vetted by entomologists, readers can be certain that no matter how wild an account may sound, it’s scientifically accurate.
Among Haskins’ many honors are the Iowa Poetry Prize, two Florida Book Awards, two NEA fellowships, and the Emily Dickinson Prize from the Poetry Society of America. W.S. Merwin said of her poetry that she “writes with the freedom and grace of a kite flying.”
