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Out of a Land of Alkali & Chromate

Out of a Land of Alkali & Chromate - Paperback

by Susan Landgraf
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Availability:In StockContributor:Susan Landgraf, Lana Hechtman AyersPublish date:2025-03-31Pages:110
Languages:EnglishPublisher:Moonpath PressISBN-13:9798989948741UPC:9798989948741Book Category:PoetryBook Subcategory:American, Women AuthorsSize:9.00 x 6.00 x 0.26 inchesWeight:0.35Product ID:SCZA98338J

Out of a Land of Alkali & Chromate is about coming from, going out, and finding home. Growing up with an unpredictable and violent father, Landgraf found sanctuary with her grandparents and in books, food, and fairy tales. This is a story of yearning and seeking-both with some help from a prince and in the many other ways she found possible to make a

life of her own.

What I love most about this alchemical collection is how a bottle of gin/[transforms to] "a Museum of Mummies/(to) a Manufacturing Plant of Mistakes." In "Places that Made Me," readers experience a life unfolding, one woman's secrets finally shaken off. Out of a Land of Akali & Chromate is equal parts Martian and Hungarian and Memory. In this, Susan Landgraf's second full-length collection, she becomes most spectacularly herself in "pinpricks of light falling without sound; in the inner altar's great stones." Muriel Rukeyser once asked, What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? Here is one gorgeous and hard-won answer.

-Susan Rich, author of Blue Atlas and Gallery of Postcards and Maps

There's a craftsperson at work in Susan Landgraf's Out of a Land of Alkali & Chromate. Her hybrid and inventive forms guide the reader from one unexpected place to another-physically, emotionally, and ecologically. Experiments with the long bones of language yield immersive sound, color, and taste, the experience of multisensory synesthesia. These richly detailed and heartbreaking poems were grown in a land where oysters teach us to pray and peaches to meditate; each surprise had me hungering for more.

-Gabriela Denise Frank, author of How to Not Become the Breaking

"In Susan Landgraf's Out of a Land of Alkali & Chromate, time arcs wide as we take a poetic journey by train from childhood trauma woven with wonder and ancestral legends to a new land of brave introspection and joy. Landgraf's matter-of-fact voice brings difficult subjects to the forefront in a way that is both charming and arresting. Untold fairy tale backstories come to light in this collection and expand the meanings of these engaging poems."

-Katy E. Ellis, author of Forty Bouts in the Wilderness

Languages:EnglishPublisher:Moonpath PressISBN-13:9798989948741UPC:9798989948741Book Category:PoetryBook Subcategory:American, Women AuthorsSize:9.00 x 6.00 x 0.26 inchesWeight:0.35Product ID:SCZA98338J
Landgraf, Susan: - Susan Landgraf has published more than 400 poems in Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Margie, Nimrod, Third Wednesday, SWWIM, CALYX, Rattle, and others. Books include Journey of Trees published by The Poetry Box; Crossings published by Ravenna Press as part of itsTriple series; The Inspired Poet from Two Sylvias Press; What We Bury Changes the Ground from Tebot Bach; Other Voices from Finishing Line Press; and Student Reflection Journal for Student Success published by Prentice Hall. An Academy of American Poets Laureate award in2020 resulted in a book of Muckleshoot Indian Tribe poetry titled A Muckleshoot Poetry Anthology: At the Confluence of the Green and White Rivers published by Washington State University Press in 2024. Landgraf has given more than 150 workshops and readings in the US and abroad, including the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, San Miguel Writers' Conference, Marine and Science Technology Center, and Antioch International, Oxford, England. She is the recipient of a Theodore Morrison Scholarship for Bread Loaf and grants from Artist Trust, Jack Straw, and King County Arts Commission. A former journalist, she taught at Highline College for 30 years and at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She served as Poet Laureate of Auburn, Washington, from 2018 to 2020.Ayers, Lana Hechtman: - Lana Hechtman Ayers, a former New Yorker who made her way to the Pacific Northwest via a dozen year sojourn in New England, has shepherded over a hundred thirty poetry volumes into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Her work appears in Rattle, The London Reader, Peregrine, and elsewhere. Lana's latest collection, The Autobiography of Rain, is available from Fernwood Press. She lives in Newport, Oregon with her husband and several fur babies. She writes in a room over the garage with a view of the Yaquina river. Say hello at LanaAyers.com.
Publisher: Moonpath Press

Contributor(s)

Susan Landgraf, Lana Hechtman Ayers

Author

Susan Landgraf

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