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| This Dirty Little Heart |
| B. T. Shaw |
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| Winner of the 2007 Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry |
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Cover art by Andrea Benson
Poetry
5.5 x 8.5, 80 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-59766-040-2
paper: $14.95 |
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Margin of Error
For example, she says, take
the supercontinent Gondwana, pulled twice
out of Earth’s mantle only to finally draw
and quarter itself after breeding an arkful
of hyperthyroidized lizards, flightless cranes,
and a species of fish with no jaw.
She keeps a list. Penicillin.
Ptolemy’s failure to save appearances.
West Saharan fossils of footed cetaceans.
The late-night meteorologist’s predictions.
And her heart. Though at times—
Meanwhile. Obviously. Night. |
The voice of B. T. Shaw in this prize-winning first collection is unlike what readers of American poetry are likely to find elsewhere. Heady, wry, private, sometimes ironic, it speaks from edges where the inner life surveys the objects and actions of that collective life-narrative we call the world. This Dirty Little Heart is a singular accomplishment—almost eccentric, yet it manages to reveal to the reader countless recognitions, countless reasons to be happy we’re alive.
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| B. T. Shaw grew up in central Ohio near her great-grandparents' homestead. Now settled in Portland with her husband and children, she edits the poetry column for The Oregonian and teaches writing and literature at Portland State University and the University of Portland , as well as through writers-in-the-schools programs. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, FIELD, Orion, Poetry Northwest, the Seattle Review, Tin House, and Willow Springs. She holds a BS from the University of Oregon and a MFA from the University of Washington. This Dirty Little Heart is her first book. |
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| Praise for This Dirty Little Heart |
“These poems are works of immediately evident force. The telling in them is everything, and the voice that speaks them is new. Never regular, the language is itself part of the story. . . . These are poems born of what stays with us, from those raw things that are, quite simply, beyond memory.”
—Alberto Ríos, author of The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body |
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