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Requiem for the Orchard (Akron Series in Poetry)
Requiem for the Orchard - Akron Series in Poetry Author:Oliver De La Paz These are vivid, visceral poems about coming of age in a place where the Ferris Wheel / was the tallest thing in the valley, where a boy would learn to fire a shotgun at nine and wring a chickens neck / with one hand by twirling the bird and whipping it straight like a towel. Looking back, the poet wrestles with the meaning of labor in the... more » apple orchards and the filthy dollars wed wad into our pockets, or the rites of passage that included sinking a knife into the flank of a dead chestnut horse. . . . The poet has a gift for rendering his world in cinematic images: a ten-gallon hat on his head in the second grade is an upside down chandelier, . . . In short, these poems are the stuff of life itself, ugly and beautiful, wherever or whenever we happen to live it.? Martín Espada« less