The Mississippi book of the dead

Author / Creator

Young, Timothy, 1949- author

Available as

Online

Physical

Summary

In this long poem, Young chronicles a trip along the Mississippi River in seventy-eight stanzas. These vignettes of life on the road-post-retirement and post-Hurricane Katrina- build upon one anoth...

In this long poem, Young chronicles a trip along the Mississippi River in seventy-eight stanzas. These vignettes of life on the road-post-retirement and post-Hurricane Katrina- build upon one another and create, as the psychologist James Hillman said of dreams, their own metaphorical reality. The speaker of these poems refuses distillation, offering instead a sweeping witness of nature and human activity along the river; little escapes his notice: "It's 5 a.m. A coyote's in the road. / A 'possum stands still in the cornfield. / As a 'coon climbs out of the state park trash, / the campground host waves goodbye. / At the window his wife washes her underarms."

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