Wild in the Plaza of Memory

Overview

Blending the personal with the political, these poems explore the deleterious effects of adversity and trauma on a global scale, focusing on such subjects as immigration laws, environmental degradation, multinational corporate greed, and the effects of war on women and children. The poet makes unexpected connections between disparate things, drawing from wild nature for imagery while also passionately engaging the reader to become aware of injustice and suffering at home and abroad. The poems are crafted using lyrical language that is at once precise, figurative, and celebratory, creating a collection that is humanitarian and emotionally resonate.

Reviews

"Accurately envisioned, strongly felt, intricately expressed, these poems establish Pam Uschuk as a powerful and essential author, one of the few able to confront the uninterrupted crisis of our era with tragic joy and an unshaken faith in the instrumental efficacy of art."  —Alfred Corn, author, Contradictions

"These poems are matrices of earth creatures, winds, suns and the need to replace travesty with justice. Each is aflutter with bird song and skeleton dance. The book is a mountain climb to vision. We look out over the ruin, the celebration. Wild in the Plaza of Memory is Uschuk's best collection thus far."  —Joy Harjo, author, How We Became Human New and Selected Poems: 1975 - 2001

"Uschuk is a recipient of an American Book Award for poetry, and deservedly so, but at ninety-seven pages, Wild in the Plaza of Memory is a long poetry collection, and the poems within are heady stuff. I will reread the book and treasure the poems a few at a time. I hope I can convince other readers to do the same." —www.ContraryMagazine.com

"The 95 pages of poetry in Wild in the Plaza of Memory is a fugue of love, politics and nature, all growing from one another, the three strands crackling with electricity where they touch. . . . These are poems to help us become most like ourselves." —www.ConnotationPress.com

"Pamela Uschuk . . . is one of those poets who can literally write about anything and find a new twist. . . . Some of these works are intensely autobiographical, yes. But others are deeply philosophical. . . . In sum, Wild is a perfectly controlled work of art." —Tucson Weekly (June 28, 2012)

"Uschuk's poems build bridges between the sacred and the fallen. In this way, her work offers hope of transcendence. To walk with this poet along the paths her mind takes is pure joy. To listen to the hymn-like language she uses is a form of receiving the sacred wafer of a linguistic communion."  —RATTLE (August 2012)

"In Wild in the Plaza of Memory, Pamela Uschuk creates a collective narrative of the human experience in a stunning portrayal of memory in its entirety, through both small, intimate moments from her speaker's life and shared communal experiences."  —Tawnysha Greene, Gently Read

"In Wild in the Plaza of Memory, Pamela Uschuk creates a collective narrative of the human experience in a stunning portrayal of memory in its entirety, through both small, intimate moments from her speaker's life and shared communal experiences." —Tawnysha Greene,  gentlyread.wordpress.com

Author Biography

Pamela Uschuk is a professor of creative writing at Fort Lewis College, the editor in chief of the literary magazine Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, and the author of four volumes of poetry, including Crazy Love, winner of the 2010 American Book Award. A recipient of the Struga International Poetry Prize, her poems have been translated into a dozen languages. She lives in Durango, Colorado.