The last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart: Poems [Paperback]

Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Author)

Book Description

Series: Karen and Michael Braziller Books | Publication Date: April 28, 2005

"Gabrielle Calvocoressi is a wonderfully talented poet."—Eavan Boland

Whether in the title poem, spoken by those who lived longingly and vicariously through the famous missing aviator, or in "Circus Fire, 1944," which intimately recounts a haunting New England tragedy, Gabrielle Calvocoressi uses her prodigious gifts of imagination and empathy to give voice to the hope and heartbreak of small-town America. In painstaking, vernacular verse, she conveys the ambitions and failings of a distraught populacein the edgy jazz portrait, "Suite Billy Strayhorn," for example, or the enthralling, interwoven sequence, "At the Adult Drive-In," which conveys, at once, a personal and communal corruption. Penetrating and compassionate, The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart portrays, with a storyteller's arc, the troubled landscape of the left-behind.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

A potent new poetic talent enters the writing scene with this tour de force debut collection. With economy of words and interweaving of voices, themes, settings, and lyrical cycles, Calvocoressi presents a slim collection that packs a punch. From the title poem, which swells with a tide, onward, characters react to aviator Amelia Earhart's disappearance and to the raw, addictive, and corrupting draw of an adult drive-in as Calvocoressi fearlessly wanders into imaginative, as well as realistic, space, speaking truth, assessing damage, and giving expression to those who are left behind. She offers both split-second, cinematic moments and images that leave lingering impressions. There is something distinctly American not only in the rural towns she depicts and the voices she "channels" but also in a brutally honest yet compassionately tender revelation of hidden truths. Calvocoressi has moved beyond the popular poetry of "self" in an effort to understand other perspectives in this original and riveting collection. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Calvocoressi brings keen and sympathetic attention to the local disasters the larger world has often overlooked. -- The New York Times Book Review, 17 July 2005

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is a wonderfully talented poet. -- Eavan Boland

Remarkable...[Calvocoressi] teases meaning out of a past...that still dogs us. -- Time Out New York, 12 May 2005

The voices of the twentieth century chorus a darkly American legacy in this bracingly intelligent debut. -- Mark Doty

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Product Details

• Paperback: 68 pages
• Publisher: Persea; 1st edition (April 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892553154
• ISBN-13: 978-0892553150
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #160,197 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved It - Now Teach It, May 20, 2005

By 

Tex (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart: Poems (Paperback)

I'm an 11th and 12th grade English teacher who loved the book so much, I dropped a couple poems into my American Literature Curriculum during a Modern Poetry Unit. The kids have responded well, particularly to "Circus Fire, 1944," and some even made the choice to focus on a few of the poems for their poetry presentations. The nature of Calvocoressi's poetry is perfect for class due to the mix of stark, forceful imagery and thematic complexity. In other words, the poems are accessible, yet still allow for complex and engaging classroom discussions/disagreements - certainly no mean feat.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So Pleasing, Heart Wrenching, Beautiful, February 2, 2006

By 

T. McDaniel (OK USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart: Poems (Paperback)

A fan of Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Pablo Neruda, Anne Carson, & C.D. Wright, among others, this was one of the most astounding collections of poetry I have ever read. Please read and support this wonderful poet!

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars She makes it look easy!, May 30, 2005

By 

Julie Sheehan - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart: Poems (Paperback)

Gabrielle Calvocoressi's poems sweep up behind us like the 1944 Hartford circus fire she writes about in them. Everyone in the big tent, women and children mostly, it being 1944 - is having a marvelous time, la, la, la. The acrobats are "an entire family / suspended from a miniature porch swing." What could go wrong? They're just like us, only tiny. Then wham! In seconds the tent is engulfed in flames. Hundreds have died, leaving "Our lives / stripped clean as oxen bones." Hartford citizens remember that fire to this day, and this book has a similarly stubborn effect. Its poems are full of porch swings and oxen bones, images ordinary Americans might reach for to describe extraordinary events. The humility of the images, together with Calvocoressi's ventriloquism, is what gives them their powerful stealth. We don't read about so much as overhear her large cast of characters - a big tent for a short book - grapple with problems of memory: how to express it, how to explain it, how to live with it, and how to live by it. The poet gets out of the way of her poems, freely admits "Having Never Been to Gettysburg," and lets "Sedge grass, Little Bluestem, Bristlecone Pine / (O if this were the worst of it)" be "Not me, that insatiable lyric, darkening / The doorway of small town beauty / Parlours." Enter those incognito temples with your hat off, big tip in hand (her characters could use the money) and due respect.