Cold Pastoral
Cold Pastoral

Author: Rebecca Dunham

Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Published: 2017-02-20

Total Pages: 81

ISBN-13: 1571319395

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FINALIST FOR THE MIDWEST BOOKSELLERS CHOICE AWARD (POETRY) A searing, urgent collection of poems that brings the lyric and documentary together in unparalleled ways—unmasking and examining the specter of manmade disaster. On September 20, 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed eleven men and began what would become the largest oil spill ever in US waters. On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, leading to a death toll that is still unconfirmed. And in April 2014, the Flint water crisis began, exposing thousands of people to lead-contaminated drinking water. This is the litany of our time—and these are the events that Rebecca Dunham traces, passionately and brilliantly, in Cold Pastoral. In poems that incorporate interviews and excerpts from government documents and other sources—poems that adopt the pastoral and elegiac traditions in a landscape where “I can’t see the bugs; I don’t hear the birds”—Dunham invokes the poet as moral witness. “I owe him,” she writes of one man affected by the oil spill, “must learn, at last, how to look.” Experimental and incisive, Cold Pastoral is a collection that reveals what poetry can—and, perhaps, should—be, reflecting ourselves and our world back with gorgeous clarity.

The Opposite of Loneliness
The Opposite of Loneliness

Author: Marina Keegan

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1476753628

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The instant New York Times bestseller and publishing phenomenon: Marina Keegan’s posthumous collection of award-winning essays and stories “sparkles with talent, humanity, and youth” (O, The Oprah Magazine). Marina Keegan’s star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at The New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash. Marina left behind a rich, deeply expansive trove of writing that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. Her short story “Cold Pastoral” was published on NewYorker.com. Her essay “Even Artichokes Have Doubts” was excerpted in the Financial Times, and her book was the focus of a Nicholas Kristof column in The New York Times. Millions of her contemporaries have responded to her work on social media. As Marina wrote: “We can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over…We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.” The Opposite of Loneliness is an unforgettable collection of Marina’s essays and stories that articulates the universal struggle all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to impact the world. “How do you mourn the loss of a fiery talent that was barely a tendril before it was snuffed out? Answer: Read this book. A clear-eyed observer of human nature, Keegan could take a clever idea...and make it something beautiful” (People).

Cold Pastoral
Cold Pastoral

Author: Margaret Duley

Publisher: Breakwater Books Limited

Published: 2014-06-01

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 9781550814798

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Mary Immaculate is just twelve years old the day she goes missing. Berry-picking in the woods near her village in outport Newfoundland, Mary has an encounter with something from another world. When she is finally found, Mary is taken to hospital in St. John's, where her attending doctor makes the decision to adopt her out of poverty. Duley's authentic portrayal of outport life sits in stark contrast to life in upper-level St. John's, making this a novel as much about class distinction as it is a stunning narrative of a woman's life in pre-Confederation Newfoundland. Originally published in 1939 to acclaim in Britain and the US, Cold Pastoral was the second novel by Margaret Duley, the acknowledged "first novelist" from Newfoundland.