Into the Into of Earth Itself

Winner of the 2024 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry

Selected by judge Diana Khoi Nguyen, Into the Into of Earth Itself is the debut collection by Amanda Hodes. The poems investigate the dual histories of two Pennsylvania towns: Palmerton and the nearby ghost town of Centralia, which was condemned due to an underground mine fire that will burn for centuries.

Through text mining, these poems excavate legislation, archival material, web comments, and even the Silent Hill screenplay, revealing the inextricable nature of environmental toxicity and toxic masculinity, the violation of the environment and violations of women. Human pollution is a "bug" in the code, prompting forms of material glitch-earthquakes, sinkholes, illness, and shame. Couched in code-like syntax, the collection cycles through an ecology of voices, from bacteria to pigeons to weeds, all the while exploring sexual assault and chronic illness, questioning what it truly means to be "natural" or "clean."