American Wake
Description
New from a poet whose astonishing images, emotional honesty, and storytelling power holds a singular clarity of vision.
An "American wake" is what the Irish call a farewell to those emigrating to the United States. A New England poet equally at home in Ireland, Kerrin McCadden explores family, death and grief, apologies, and all manner of departures. In the collection's title poem, McCadden writes: When we are out to sea, we look back to see facesringing the shore like a fence, those we love in up
to their hips in waves, waving goodbye like mad. Included in American Wake are the poems, "My Broken Family," "Weeks After My Brother Overdoses," "One Way to Apologize to a Daughter for Careless Words," "Portrait of the Family as a Definition," and "My Mother Talks to Her Son about Her Heart." This collection by a writer of extraordinary gifts will appeal to readers who believe in the potential of carefully hewn words to unveil our world and our deepest feelings to ourselves. As the acclaimed memoirist Nick Flynn (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City) puts it: "Kerrin McCadden transforms tragedy into myth."
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About the Author
Kerrin McCadden is the author of Landscape with Plywood Silhouettes (New Issues, 2014) and Keep This To Yourself (Button Poetry, 2020). A recent National Endowment for the Arts fellowship awardee, her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series, and recently in American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. She teaches at Montpelier High School and is the Associate Director of the Conference on Poetry and Teaching at The Frost Place. She lives in South Burlington, Vermont.
