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"A Brief History of Time", Beers' first collection of poetry, is at once an exploration of what it is to grow up in rural America and a treatise for social justice. These poems, many of them award-winning, span a wide range of styles-from plainsong free verse to sestinas to nearly epic works.
The characters/speakers in Beers' poems range from the rural working class to mythological characters. These poems look at the world with an honest, unflinching eye. She is one of the up-and-coming poets from Generation X we will be hearing a great deal from in the future.
List of contents
- A Brief History of Time
- Would you know me
- First Love
- Elegy for a Past Life
- Red Heifer
- Stretching out that fifteen minutes
- Triptych - The Light, The End, The Light
- A Man Walks Into a Bar
- Why Gold-digging Fails
- "HA?!"
- The Thermophobic's Wife
- Sleep
- Sleeping Man and Woman, Circa 2000, C.E.
- For Stephen Funk, in Prison for Protesting the Iraq War
- Sunday Worship
- Fitriani in front of her house . . .
- Last Train from the City
- Summer 2000 Sestina
- Rebuttal Evidence
- A Letter to Aya Ishibashi
- Why It Almost Never Ends with Stripping
- To CKC, Stillborn, April 22, 2006
- Overview of the Carbon Cycle
- Rewind
- A Study in Weights and Measures
- Surgery
- Body Shop
- What Will We Do With You? This Bone Has Almost No Flesh Protecting It -
- Wind Advisory
- In a Top Drawer
- Cicadas
- My Love, A Partial Explanation
- Flashback
- Taking Back the Bra Drawer
- Mother
- Moonlight Sestina
- Branching
- The Calypso Diaries
- Belonging
- Outdoor Cafe, Lake Mary, FL
- Omens
- Return
- Weekend Rain Ghazal
- I Give You Words
- Because You Are In It
- Tonight in this hotel room's mirrored wall . . .
- How Time Betrays Us
About the author
Shaindel Beers' poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is currently an instructor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon, in Eastern Oregon's high desert and serves as Poetry Editor of
Contrary.
The Children's War is her second poetry collection from Salt.
