The poems, essays, short stories and novel excerpts Brown and Taylor have collected capture the glory of air travel while acknowledging the perils of flying. The selections range from works by well-known authors, such Ian McEwan's account of a ballooning accident from his novel Enduring Love, to the musings of more obscure writers, like flight attendant Rosemary Griggs's inventive story "Isoka, a Northern Province of Zambia, 1999." Whether observing life lessons garnered from flight classes, as in Diane Ackerman's "On Extended Wings," or arriving passengers embracing in Ellen Bass's poem "Gate C22," the contributors take an eclectic approach to flight. The most haunting entries deal with the fears and realities of death associated with flying. Terrifying images may linger in readers' minds after perusing the chilling excerpt from Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, which details a death at the hands of hijackers. Of all the pieces, Jeffrey Harrison's poem "Pale Blue City" is most poignant. He describes New York City viewed from the air in 2000: "I want it all to stay/ just like this.... But the plane/ is moving on, the city slips away...." As if in response, Ackerman writes, "[T]he only and ultimate fright is of trusting, releasing yourself to the present." This well-chosen anthology will delight, surprise and haunt anyone who takes to the air.
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Product Description
From takeoff to landing and everything in-between, this anthology is about flying and the culture surrounding this precarious method of transportation. From the awe of being airborne to the shrink-wrapped airplane meals, from the phobia of flying to the very real reason for that fear, everything is explored.
Contributors include: Diane Ackerman, Margaret Atwood, Sharon Bryan, Andrea Hollender Budy, Kelly Cherry, Alain de Botton, Richard Garcia, Lise Goett, Albert Goldbarth, Jeffrey Harrison, Brenda Hillman, Peter LaSalle, Philip Levine, Lee Martin, William Matthews, Ian McEwan, Campbell McGrath, Carol Muske-Dukes, Marilyn Nelson, Naomi Shahib Nye, Barbara Ras, Sherrod Santos, Bruce Smith, Susan Stewart, Terese Svoboda, James Tate, Jean Valentine, Arthur Vogelsang, Charles Harper Webb, Jan Wesley, Colson Whitehead, Gary Young
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