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Look at This Blue

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( 108 ratings, 21 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Look at This Blue is a book-length poem that blends elegy, indictment, and hope in a poignant love letter to California. Allison Adelle Hedge Coke explores America's genocidal past and ongoing environmental crises, warning of future mass extinction and climate peril. Through an assemblage of historical records and lyrical fragments, the work catalogues threatened livesβ€”human, plant, and animalβ€”amid the climate emergency, calling for reckoning and resistance against continued violence toward Earth and its inhabitants.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$3499
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book will resonate with readers interested in environmental issues, poetry lovers drawn to historical and cultural critique, as well as anyone engaged with themes of indigenous rights, climate activism, and artistic expressions of ecological crises.

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Interweaving elegy, indictment, and hope into a love letter to California, Look at This Blue examines America's genocidal past and present to warn of a future threatened by mass extinction and climate peril.

Truths about what we have lost and have yet to lose permeate this book-length poem by American Book Award winner and Fulbright scholar Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. An assemblage of historical record and lyric fragments, these poems form a taxonomy of threatened livesβ€”human, plant, and animalβ€”in a century marked by climate emergency.

Look at This Blue insists upon a reckoning with and redress of America's continuing violence toward Earth and its peoples, as Hedge Coke's cataloguing of loss crescendos into resistance.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Look at This Blue has been praised for its lyrical depth and urgent environmental message. Diego BΓ‘ez of Poetry Foundation commends it as "an impressive lyrical accounting of California’s biodiversity" and a "hypnotic assembly of discordant parts," urging readers to face global challenges collectively. Emily Vizzo from World Literature Today highlights Hedge Coke’s musicality and historic proximity, likening her work to celebrated poets such as Aracelis Girmay and Claudia Rankine, noting its smart, subtle, and textured qualities.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781566896207

Publisher: Coffee House Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 12 May 2022

Country: United States

Imprint: Coffee House Press

Illustration: Illustrations

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 228.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 128

About the Author

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, a Fulbright scholar, First Jade Nurtured SiHui Female International Poetry Award recipient, recent Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals, and U.S. Library of Congress Witter Bynner fellow, has written seven books of poetry, one book of nonfiction, and a play. Following former fieldworker retraining in Santa Paula and Ventura in the mid-1980s, she began teaching, and she is now a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.

Hedge Coke is the editor of ten anthologies and has served as an editor and guest editor for several magazines and journals, most recently World Literature Today. The social media hashtag #poempromptsforthepandemic hosts hundreds of original prompts she crafted as public outreach during the COVID-19 pandemic. A career community advocate and organizer, she most recently directed UCR's Writers Week, the Along the Chaparral/Powaina project, and the Sandhill Crane Migration Retreat and Festival.

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