Ballard Spahr Prize 2023 Winner

Poems

Caroline Harper New (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

96 Seiten

2024
Milkweed Editions (Verlag)
978-1-57131-530-4 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

Selected by Maggie Smith for the 2023 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, this debut collection of poems explores the aftermath of history’s most powerful forces: devotion, disaster, and us.

Rooted in the Gulf Coast, A History of Half-Birds measures the line between love and ruin. Part poet, part anthropologist, Caroline Harper New digs into dark places—a cave, a womb, a hurricane—to trace how violence born of devotion manifests not only in our human relationships, but also in our connections to the natural and animal worlds. Everywhere in these pages, tenderness is coupled with brutality: a deer eats a baby bird, a lover restrains another. “I promised / a love poem,” New proclaims, then teaches us about the anglerfish, how it “attracts its mate / and prey with the same lure.”

In New’s exceptional voice, familiar concepts take on a shade of the fantastic. A woman tastes the earth for acidity, buries lemons and pennies for balance. Limestone “sucks the sea / into little demitasse” and hyacinths “sip the sun / black.” A lone elephant wanders into the wilderness of rural Georgia, never to be seen again. But perhaps most arresting about New’s work are the truths told by its strangeness, like the ancient fish who “carved their shape” in a mountain’s peak, or a mother who wears a lifejacket in the bathtub.

Crafted by New’s voracious mind and carried by her matchless lyricism, A History of Half-Birds is a stunning investigation of love’s beastly impulses—all it protects, and all it destroys.

Caroline Harper New is the author of A History of Half-Birds, winner of the 2023 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. She is a poet and visual artist from the Gulf Coast with a background in anthropology, and she holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Michigan. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Palette Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, and Driftwood Press. She is winner of Palette Poetry’s 2023 Love & Eros Prize, the Malahat Review’s 2023 Open Season Award, the Cincinnati Review’s 2022 Robert and Adele Schiff Award, and Bellevue Literary Review’s 2022 John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

CONTENTS

PART I
WIDDERSHINS

The Elephant Mother XXX

Widdershins XXX

The Archaeology Magazine XXX

Garden of Eve XXX

Management of the Living XXX

Fieldnotes on Cape San Blas XXX

Auguries by Mouth XXX

Ekphrasis XXX

Fieldnotes on Carrying XXX

Driving Through Dunedin XXX

PART II
PARLOR TRICKS

Notes on Devotion XXX

The Bathtub XXX

If We Move Back in Together XXX

Fieldnotes on Hydrangeas XXX

Interview With a Cervidologist XXX

Etymology of Chlorophyll XXX

Patients Regain Song Before Speech XXX

If We Stage the Wizard of Oz With Alligators XXX

Fieldnotes on Juniper XXX

The Sargassum Fish XXX

My Ancestors in South Carolina XXX

Fieldnotes on the Bloodmoon XXX

Ereshkigal, Our Sinkhole Sister XXX

Love Poem for My Bird Dog XXX

PART III
HYPOTHETICAL MOONS

Moon Song for My Mother XXX

Searching for Amelia (I) XXX

Fieldnotes on the Red-Bellied Woodpecker XXX

The Women of Weeki Wachee XXX

Searching for Amelia (II) XXX

Parlor Tricks XXX

Fieldnotes on Red XXX

The Bioluminescent Bays of Vieques XXX

Fieldnotes on Hypothetical Moons XXX

Searching for Amelia (III) XXX

Elk Lake XXX

The Loon’s Solid Bones Help Her Sink XXX

Notes XXX

Gratitude XXX

Erscheinungsdatum	19.12.2023
Reihe/Serie	Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry
Zusatzinfo	Illustrations
Verlagsort	Minneapolis
Sprache	englisch
Maße	139 x 215 mm
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Lyrik / Gedichte
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Natur / Ökologie
	Reisen ► Bildbände
ISBN-10	1-57131-530-6 / 1571315306
ISBN-13	978-1-57131-530-4 / 9781571315304
Zustand	Neuware