Title
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Contents
Down on the Farm -- Impromptu -- Spectacle Island, Boston Harbor -- Mt. Auburn Owl -- Jugglebirds Abroad -- Seminar -- From the Book of Foxes -- My Mother and the Myriad Things -- Soon -- Manners -- My Brother's Back -- Nots -- Accidentals -- Fogbow -- Souvenir -- Mt. Pinatubo -- Fortune -- Look Here -- Northeast Suite -- Origin -- Passage with Owls -- Slip -- Ease -- Spill -- Bog at Black Pond -- Understory
Abstract
Pamela Alexander's poetry is characterized by inventive language, scrupulous accuracy of imagery, and a winning fusion of the comic and the deeply serious. Her subjects vary as widely as her settings, which range from the New Hampshire woods to the Arizona desert. A family life eccentric to the point of chaos, close observations of wildlife, and coastal sailing are among the poet's topics. Despite this variety, Inland has an emerging organization that suggests a kind of plot. The family is left behind in the way that families of origin always are, revealed fully only in perspective. The longest poem here, "Swallowing the Anchor" (the title is the sailors' term for giving up the sea), is also the most directly personal. It closes the section of the book in which the poet comes to terms with losses, including the death of a loved one. She does this with grace - and her wit is not jokes, her poignancy is not sentimentality.
Series Title
Iowa poetry prize
Award Date
1996
Publication Date
1997
Publisher
University of Iowa Press
City
Iowa City
Total Pages
68
ISBN of Print Version
9780877455820
Rights
Copyright 1997 Pamela Alexander
Recommended Citation
Alexander, Pamela. Inland: poems. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997.
https://ir.uiowa.edu/uipress_ipp/4