Lisa Rosenberg pens a new book of poems, “Weeds and Stars”

We reached out to local poet Lisa Rosenberg about her new book, Weeds and Stars, and here is her reply:

“Nearly all of Weeds and Stars was written from the early pandemic through 2025. As a collection, this work came together differently, and more quickly, than my first book (A Different Physics, 2018), in part because circumstances were so drastically changed. Although writing time remained scarce during quarantine, it was not as scattered and broken as usual. I was able to work on essays as well as poems, which led to working in forms that were fairly new to me as a writer, such as prose poems.

“It was like a period of unofficial craft apprenticeship, and also of learning to work with what was nearby: imagery from neighborhood walks, the uptick in backyard birds, and fascination with the night sky. The influence of scientific thinking runs throughout the book, and is more often a matter of structure and mode than explicit theme.

“In 2022, this nascent project gained momentum during a Djerassi “Leonardo” residency in the Santa Cruz mountains. Immersed in many weed- and star-filled vistas, and supported by a talented cohort, I had space and time to find common lines of inquiry in the handful of poems written since my first book. Looking now at the earliest piece (roughly 2014), I had already been thinking a lot about division and divisiveness. Through the process of composing a poem, that thinking often arrives at connections and correspondences.

“Writing the poems in Weeds and Stars became a study in interconnectedness: seeing patterns, parallels, and linkages that can stretch our understandings of kinship across many kinds of boundaries and divisions — not just social, but creaturely and planetary, biological and nonbiological, small and vast, fantastic and mundane. The title says as much, in three small words.

“Most of the poems have plants and/or celestial bodies as starting points or focus. And many build on the work of other poets, present and past. I found new possibilities of voice, structure, and landing places at every turn, and ways to proceed amid uncertainty, trusting in the wisdom of this very old, enduring art form.”

Lisa will be reading  with fellow authors from the Writers Grotto on  Saturday, June 6, at 6:30pm at Telegraph Hill Books in San Francisco. (1501 Grant Avenue).

Photo by  Thinh Le