Casualty Reports

Stylistically innovative, deeply moving, carefully researched, Martha Collins’s eleventh volume of poetry combines her well-known attention to social issues with the elegiac mode of her previous book. She focuses here on race, gun violence, recent wars, and, in an extended sequence, the history of coal—first as her ancestors mined it, then from its geological origins to our ecologically threatened present. Casualty Reports is both indictment and lament, a work that speaks forcefully to our troubled history and our present times.

 

AND THE REVOLUTION WE CALL THE

coal to power steam engines
to pump water & lift coal
to sell or use to power steam

coal to coke for furnaces
to smelt iron to make tools
& furnaces to smelt for rails

trains to transport coal to power
steam engines to power trains
& boats to transport coal

harnessed the power of
raised to the power
of power

 

AGAIN LATER

The person you are trying

is not accepting. Is not

at this time. Please

again. The person

you are trying is not

in service. Please check

that you have. This

is your call. Your

person is not accepting.

Your person is this

number. You have

not correctly. Your person

is a recording. Again later

at this time. Not accepting.