Rest

by Margaree Little

Overview

Rest is a vivid, powerful collection examining the human cost of crossing the border. In 2010, Margaree Little was working for a humanitarian mission near Tucson when, along with a group of volunteers, she found the unidentified dead body of a man, who a medical examiner would later estimate died at least six months before. This discovery serves as the jumping-off point to a stunning, elegiac series of poems commemorating an imagined, unknown life. Anchored by Little’s keen eye and unsparing self-reflection, this collection asks us to examine how a single life can affect so many others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945588105
Publisher:	Four Way Books
Publication date:	03/06/2018
Series:	Stahlecker Selections
Pages:	86
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

MARGAREE LITTLE received her BA from Brown University and MFA from Warren Wilson College. The recipient of a 2013 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and various fellowships, scholarships and residencies, Little teaches creative writing at Kenyon College.

Table of Contents

I

The Visit 3

Map 6

The Calling 9

What Was Missing 11

Rest 13

What Begins as a List of Things Lost to Him 15

The Subjunctive 16

Revision 18

Vigil 20

The Dead 22

II List of Recovered Human Remains, Arizona-Mexico Border, 2009-2010

The Orchard 28

February 31

The Mattress 31

What Was Missing (2) 32

Omission 34

The Field 35

Harvest 37

Pace 39

The Instrument Maker 40

The Spring 42

Return 43

III List of Recovered Human Remains, 2009-2010, continued

Rest (2) 50

Remainder 52

The Heron 53

Using It 56

The Familiar 58

At Trustom Pond 60

The Shirt 62

The Spool 63

The Studio 64

Cairns 67

Thanksgiving 69

List of Recovered Human Remains, 2009-2010, continued

Notes

What People are Saying About This

Eleanor Wilner

“...these poems bear witness as they burn and burn.”

Mary Szybist

“...formidable, vital, human work.”

Editorial Reviews

05/15/2018
While working for a humanitarian mission near Tucson, AZ, Little and a group of colleagues discovered the remains of an unidentified man in the desert who had been dead at least six months. That sobering discovery ("my friends and I carried the man we found/ together, the forty pounds of him") inspired this accomplished first collection. It opens with Little's mission work and expands to envision the deceased's life at home ("If not the cane fields, …/ it could have been a city with white walls"), his arduous journey ("he carried a river on his back and drank from/ it that whole walk through the desert"), and the terrible what-ifs (what if "he went back home,…/ never put his mouth/ to the gravel here"). Little unflinchingly ponders life, death, and this hard world but offers succor, too: the piano music resounding throughout, Betty's minestrone soup. VERDICT An important story affecting and effective in its simplicity.

Library Journal