Resembling A Wild Animal is a collection of poems which explore what it means to be wild and what it means to be only human. The poems delve into the wildness of motherhood, animal personas, and the weird streaks of feral that can be found in everyday life. There is also a yearning to exist in the world among these animals and not separate from them, to engage in the wildness even as it escapes the self. In these ways, Bush Vadala's work as a veterinarian is inextricably linked to her poetry, and the way animals influence her daily life.
Clara Bush Vadala is a veterinarian and poet from Van Alstyne, Texas where she lives with her partner, their beautiful daughter, and their menagerie of animals. She has had recent work published or forthcoming with New South Review, Daily Drunk Mag, and Moss Puppy, among others.
"With a surgeon's deft and knowledgeable attention, a singer's ear, and a resplendent knack for sensory detail, Clara Vadala has crafted an expansive bestiary unlike any other, evoking animal as livelihood, inspiration, curse, delight, antagonist, companion, vessel, beloved, offspring, and self. I love this book's dark humor, the specificity of its images, and its gripping exploration of the blurred boundaries between creatures. Resembling a Wild Animal is a gorgeous, transformative ode to the lives—wild, domesticated, and between—that grow to layer one's own." — Gabrielle Bates, author of Judas Goat
"Clara Vadala's Resembling a Wild Animal is a zoo, a habitat, a wilderness. We are partner to predator and prey within these poems, the tigers and the chickens, the fawns and the dogs. Throughout this wild and blood-heavy book, Vadala deftly reflects on extinction, mortality, innocence, motherhood, and the parallels between animal and human behavior. Aren't we all just animals underneath our fur and skin? Of course, in our domesticity, there lies an inherent wildness. A veterinarian herself, Vadala writes brilliantly and viscerally of the sterile scent of medications, the intricacies and histories behind animal behaviors, and the bites that draw blood. These poems beckon us to revel in anxiety, grief, fear, and hunger. These poems are feral. They have teeth." — Sara Ryan, author of I Thought There Would Be More Wolves
