Books

Saints of South Dakota and Other Poems
by Katharine Whitcomb

2000 Bluestem Award

In this breathtaking debut collection, Katharine Whitcomb’s Saints of South Dakota wrests from the clatter of the American road a new language that is both prayerful and muscular, tender and utterly necessary. In poems examining the perils of difficult love, Whitcomb brings readers to an understanding of inevitable suffering, and finds a hard-won transcendence in the details of the lived life. These poems–elegant in form, and tonally scrupulous–show us that ecstatic revelation is real, poignant, and right before our eyes.

"The poems in this collection are full of wondrous things: Chinatown funerals, customized Cadillacs, men who dive through glass with cats in their arms to escape from burning buildings. Artfully wrong, yet hewing in subject matter to the heartware and gutware that really matter to us, these poems gripped and held me and kept me returning to their hold."

--Lucia Perillo, 2000 Final Judge

More information can be found at the Bluestem Press website.

Chapbooks

A link to the publisher

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hosannas
Katharine Whitcomb

Parallel Press Poetry Chapbooks

Hosannas is a collection of nine poems by the award-winning poet Katharine Whitcomb. The word hosanna traditionally refers to a shout of praise or an appeal for deliverance, and her poems fit both meanings. Whitcomb's poetry is informed by her experience of driving through the Midwestern landscape for ten years as a traveling sales rep, and her resulting reverence for the people and the history of that region. The work is a weaving, narrative journey that asks questions and seeks answers by comparison and through hope.