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Book

The low passions : poems

Call Number

  • 811 C2849 (CEN)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2019]

Physical Description

95 pages ; 22 cm

Summary

"In this haunting debut, 'Anders Carlson-Wee makes the rugged physical and emotional world of the upper plains our world' (B. H. Fairchild). Explosive and incantatory, The Low Passions traces the fringes of the American experiment through the eyes of a young drifter. Pathologically frugal, reckless, and vulnerable, the narrator of these viscerally compelling poems hops freight trains, hitchhikes, dumpster dives, and sleeps in the homes of total strangers, scavenging forgotten and hardscrabble places for tangible forms of faith. Amplified by a chorus of monologues from the strangers who shelter him, and the family he's left behind, a range of strong-willed characters takes shape--made manifest by the poet's devoted ear and sensitive eye"--

Contents

  • Riding the owl's eye
  • County 19
  • Dynamite
  • Finding Scott
  • Great Plains Food Bank
  • Leaving Fargo
  • Birdcalls
  • Living
  • Icefisher
  • McDonald's
  • Primer
  • The muscles in their throats
  • Lodestar
  • Gathering firewood on tinpan
  • Cousin Scott on doomsday
  • Asking for work at flathead Bible
  • Jim Tucker lets me sleep in his treehouse
  • To the rail cop at Rathdrum
  • Earshot
  • Flood of '97
  • The raft
  • Cousin Scott on family
  • Old church
  • Moorcroft
  • Living with the accident
  • Fire
  • Polaroid
  • Lillian
  • Short bed
  • Between boulders
  • Cousin Scott goes off on food stamps
  • Clausen's dog
  • Checking for ticks
  • Lyle clears my throat
  • Pride
  • News
  • St. Mary's memorial
  • Cousin Scott on lighthouse mission
  • Soft hunting
  • The mark
  • Northern corn
  • Cutting for sign
  • Butte
  • Cousin Scott on his liver
  • Affording the funeral
  • Shoalwater
  • Ms. Range wants to see me in it
  • Taken in
  • The low passions
  • Years later, I go back to thank you
  • After fighting
  • To my cousin Scott with nothing
  • Listening to a rail in Mandan.

Genres

Poetry.