The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart: Poems

by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Overview

"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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780892553150
Publisher:	Persea Books
Publication date:	04/25/2005
Series:	Karen and Michael Braziller Books
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	68
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of Apocalyptic Swing, The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, and Rocket Fantastic. She is Associate Professor and Walker Percy Fellow in Poetry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an editor-at-large for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Similar in theme and tone to Kettle Bottom by Diane Gilliam Fisher, these poems often focus on characters from small, neglected, blue-color towns -- think miners, factory workers, embittered housewives, and children who grow up way too fast. The bulk of the collection comprises several multi-part poems:

The title poem, as told by ten different personae, describing their reactions to the disappearance of the maverick pilot; the voices include the flight's radio operator, a high school teacher, and Earhart's husband and stepson.

"From the Adult Drive-In," a poem in nine parts told from the perspective of a young woman experiencing a sexual awakening prompted by images she glimpses of an adult drive-in movie theater.

"Circus Fire, 1944," an excruciating recounting of a Hartford, Connecticut, tragedy told in 22 parts from widely divergent perspectives; most notably, in a substory about the fire's perpetrator.

"Suite Billy Strayhorn," a stunning five-part poem about child abuse in Depression-era Ohio.

Sprinkled among the multi-part poems are several stand-alones, including two prose poems and one ghazal, which, interestingly, ignores the convention of including a rhyme just before the repeated end word(s) of each couplet. Couplets or triplets are the architectural staple throughout, but Calvorcaressi occasionally diverges into more open forms. Her line breaks, in particular, are remarkably well planned, and she uses internal rhyme sparingly but to excellent effect.

A beautifully harrowing collection, highly recommended -- particularly for all who like their poetry a bit on the dark side. Lissa Kiernan

bn.com

"One day, walking through a room,// you realize what you were holding/ is gone and you can't find it, even/ when you get down on your knees." Such is the somber tone of this powerful debut, in which small-town America comes alive in all its unsettling glory. It is a place where dreams remain unfulfilled and unwanted memories linger long after the climax. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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