The Poet as Archeologist

In her new poetry collection, Before the Forest Burns (Kelsay Books, 2025), Leslie Monsour works as a poet-archeologist, using language as a trowel, brush, and magnifying glass with which she explores real and metaphorical landscapes. The poems themselves are gems, and when read together additional treasures emerge: the remarkable way poems reveal themselves, and Monsour’s role in unearthing them.