Wings Moist from the Other World (poems)
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994
Hardcover: 101 pages ISBN: 0-8229-3774-3
Paperback: 101 pages ISBN: 0-8229-5518-0

Currently out of print. The paperback is available from Open Books, a Poem Emporium.

Or you may contact me. I have a few new first edition hardbacks and would be pleased to autograph one for you. Contact peggyzoe@gmail.com

WINGS MOIST FROM THE OTHER WORLD

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

Shumaker's poems have a slick, polished exterior, while just beneath the surface lie pools of almost treacherous emotion. ...Two diametrically opposed, yet equally harsh, landscapes—the scalding heat of Arizona and the brutal cold of Alaska—heighten the book's tensions. The poet is simultaneously awed by and wrestling with the forces of nature. The sun gives off a "cancerous grace" and "each grain of pollen / is a medieval mace, a weapon against breath," yet in this same desert "water's always holy." A small group of poems at the end, displaying a gentle eroticism, hint at a serenity well deserved ...  —Publisher's Weekly

"[These] poems beg to be read aloud for the sheer pleasure of the sounds. Her language is clean, pared down to the bare bones of meaning.... Her writing is potent, spellbinding and courageous.
—Kliatt

FROM THE BOOK

Exit Glacier

When we got close enough
we could hear

rivers inside the ice
heaving splits

the groaning of a ledge
about to

calve. Strewn in the moraine,
fresh moose sign—

tawny oblong pellets
breaking up

sharp black shale. In one breath
ice and air—

history, the record
of breaking—

prophecy, the warning
of what's yet to break

out from under
four stories

of bone-crushing turquoise
retreating.

CHAPBOOKS:

Braided River

Greatest Hits

ANTHOLOGIES:

Anthologies