Crater and Tower To pay by check please use this order form. We are pleased to take orders from retailers. Email us with details about your order or call us at 207-837-5760. Crater and Tower poetically juxtaposes the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980—the deadliest eruption in United States history—with the attack on The World Trade Center on September 11, 2001—the deadliest terroriest attack in United States history. These historic events haunt the collective American consciousness, and this book touches the collective American soul. First pubished in 2020 during the COVID epidemic, this expanded edition includes several new poems as the author looks back twenty-four years to the second of these two destructive events. ISBN: 978-1-962082-77-8 (print; softcover; perfect bound) 94 pages; 3 black-and-white illustrations |
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“Cheryl J. Fish is a poet of the event. In Crater and Tower, she centers on the eruption of Mount St. Helens and 9-11, two catastrophes so explosive that they nearly defy language. But this challenge itself becomes her muse, or as Fish puts it ‘if there's loss take to the real.’ Adding to her personal witness, she imagines these events from the perspectives of both historical and contemporary figures. Doing so, she accords these disasters the reverence they deserve but also registers the powerful resilience they evoke. It's an attitude she carries into even quiet moments in the book. The poems in this moving collection encourage us to keep going.” -- “Fish manages to weave in everything from Yeti to Dixie Lee Ray to Trump-loving dates from Hell. These are poems that report from the ground and not from the surface of a screen. Fish articulates a sharp ecological and political stance, along with a personal vulnerability rarely seen in conjunction with those stances. A terrific read and something that may well have staying power in a society, where, as the author reminds us, ‘it's always shark week.” - “Crater and Tower is a compelling testament to the vital act of listening as Fish attests to devastation and renewal. ‘What you can't fathom finds you,’ she warns. She excavates personal, political, and ecological circumstances to enrich our perspectives and fathom new meaning.” -- “With a light investigative touch, Cheryl J. Fish follows not just events of terrain but also of interior worlds, imagination, and the ephemeral. She asks: Where are we? Who are they? And then: Do images disappear? The answer is no—not if they are contained here.” |
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