10.29.2025

SHADOW OF A BEAR

UPDATE
Friends, this is the first time I’ve ever had to update a post before it was even posted. But here is the update: Rebecca Weil’s new chapbook from Monday Editions has sold out within hours of its publication announcement. Monday Editions now has a second (open) edition in the works. Put yourself on the waiting list here.

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It’s publication day for Shadow of a Bear: A Poem in 23 Passages, by Rebecca Weil. This limited edition, signed and numbered, includes a brief introductory essay by the author. You can read about the book here and buy a copy here. All proceeds support the Kilham Bear Center’s rescue, rehabilitation, and release of orphaned, abandoned, and injured black bear cubs.

Rebecca Weil, Shadow of a Bear: A Poem in 23 Passages (Monday Editions, 2025). Cover illustration by Kristen Griger. Limited edition of 50 copies, signed and numbered; 40 pages, with an introductory essay by the author.

I see Rebecca Weil finding ways, while observing the wild world, to learn from its rhythms—gluttony, longing, rest. She has a way of writing little blessings for moments of insight that settle the mind. Weil reminds me that a poem, like an episode of direct encounter with Earth creatures, can offer discovery, connection, immersion, as if leaves and wings and roots and all the rest are teaching us how to be human here, and Weil is the courier of this instruction.
—Kim Stafford, author of Wild Honey, Tough Salt, Singer Come from Afar, and As the Sky Begins to Change

Rebecca Weil writes with hope: “we can make space / for the wild around us / and inside us.” The speaker in this kaleidoscopic poem questions what it means to see the “other”—in this case, Ursus americanus—for what the “other” truly is while showing us how the maternal may help bridge the divide. Weil’s language—at moments spare, at other times lush and luxurious—enthralls, serving as a wise and insistent guide to the possibilities of crossing boundaries and of learning, with deep compassion and empathy, to live peacefully in the presence of the world that sustains us.
—Todd Davis, author of Native Species, Coffin Honey, and Ditch Memory: New and Selected Poems

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Rebecca Weil writes from the edge of a heron rookery surrounded by swamps, forests, and farmland. Her recent writing has been published in One, Emerge Literary Journal, Earthshine, Humana Obscura, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, the Journal of Wild Culture, and Phoebe: A Journal of Literature and Art, where her piece “Old Friends” was a finalist in the journal’s 2024 nonfiction contest. Weil has work forthcoming in Pangyrus and is the author of Bring Me the Ocean: Nature as Teacher, Messenger, and Intermediary, an award-winning collection of true stories about connecting individuals and communities with nature. More of her writing can be found at www.rebeccaweil.com.

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As always, warm thanks and great appreciation to the Monday Editions Colophon Club. Your support of Diary Poems and Monday Editions helped make this book possible.