cover of book
 
edited by Virgil & Ryan G. Suarez & Van Cleave
University of Iowa Press, 2002
Paper: 978-0-87745-792-3
Library of Congress Classification PS595.V55L55 2002
Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54080355

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK

 More than 140 poems by 120 of America's best poets that focus on the effects of violence in contemporary America.


From Waco to Columbine, from Oklahoma City to New York City, from domestic abuse and drive-by shootings to religious fanaticism and acts of terrorism, the poems in Like Thunder are for those who have perished and those who have survived. More than 140 poems by 120 poets focus, in the editors' words, on “the violence in the news, the violence in our schools, the violence in our homes, as well as the violence in our own minds.”


The poets gathered here articulate terror and suffering but also present images of hope and redemption; they write of individual menaces and individual victims and the melding of the two that potentially exists in everyone. By transforming horrifying details into larger truths, they create a poetry of witness, of survival, and of remembrance.