Caroline Maun
September 201928 pages, paperback
$10.95
ISBN 978-1-935770-18-3
Accident is a series of vignettes about a motorcycle accident, told in the nonlinear way that memory works. This is juxtaposed with observations on the randomness of nature, the opportunities for life and death. The struggles of insects, birds, fish and flora, and our part in their dramas, even if only as observer, provide a counterpoint to the details of another relationship that almost didn’t make it. This intuitive, delicate interweaving of human accident and the natural world broadens our view of trauma and leads us to reflect on the tensions of freedom and captivity, and capacity and incapacity, in a world where instruments that may harm us lie idle all around, and our most basic impulses may put us at deep risk.
“In line after beautiful line, Maun takes on the larger truth: accidents surprise, elude and come for us whether we swerve or not. These masterful poems deftly grapple with the big questions of love, loss, and how to deal with what might have been as well as what we all know is coming.”
— Kelly Fordon, author of Goodbye Toothless House, The Witness, and Garden for the Blind
Click on this sample page to see larger
