Overview
An extraordinary and rapturous new collection by Diane Seuss, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for frank: sonnets
Althea is an evocative swerve in Diane Seuss’s ongoing exploration of the language used to describe the particular off-brand of warped freedom radiated by the rural poor. These poems are ravishing lyric distillations of a place broken by policy, loss, and isolation, where most things don’t last, including its people, but poetry has held on. In playful interactions with poems of the past and with Gwendolyn Brooks as a presiding authority, Seuss creates compressed lines and insistent rhymes to depict a world constrained by social rules deserving of parody and protest.
Enter Althea: a tenacious adolescent, a flower, a song, an adamant bookworm, an apparition of aborted daughters, an elusive figure glimpsed at the edges of landscape, or perhaps herself the landscape. Like poetry, she exists outside the margins of the definable. Her origins are wild asters and the stars—and roadkill overrun by the inequities of class, gender, and poverty.
Seuss’s taut, sonically propulsive poems capture the sound of grief for the world unscreened, the past, the dead, and the intensifying ravagings of this country against its people and the imagination.
While major retailers like Amazon may carry Althea (Poems), we specialize in bulk book sales and offer personalized service from our friendly, book-smart team based in Portland, Oregon. We’re proud to offer a Price Match Guarantee and a streamlined ordering experience from people who truly care.
We’re trusted by over 75,000 customers, many of whom return time and again. Want proof? Just check out our 25,000+ customer reviews—real feedback from people who love how we do business.
Prefer to talk to a real person? Our Book Specialists are here Monday–Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST and ready to help with your bulk order of Althea (Poems).