Overview

Crater and Tower poetically juxtaposes the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980-the deadliest eruption in United States history-with the attack on The World Trade Center on September 11, 2001-the deadliest terroriest attack in United States history. These historic events haunt the collective American consciousness, and this book touches the collective American soul. First pubished in 2020 during the COVID epidemic, this expanded edition includes several new poems as the author looks back twenty-four years to the second of these two destructive events.

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9781962082778

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Reviews

""Cheryl J. Fish is a poet of the event. In Crater and Tower, she centers on the eruption of Mount St. Helens and 9-11, two catastrophes so explosive that they nearly defy language. But this challenge itself becomes her muse, or as Fish puts it 'if there's loss take to the real.' Adding to her personal witness, she imagines these events from the perspectives of both historical and contemporary figures. Doing so, she accords these disasters the reverence they deserve but also registers the powerful resilience they evoke. It's an attitude she carries into even quiet moments in the book. The poems in this moving collection encourage us to keep going.""-Elaine Equi, Guggenheim poetry fellow, author of Out of the Blank -""Cheryl J. Fish manages to weave in everything from Yeti to Dixie Lee Ray to Trump-loving dates from Hell. These are poems that report from the ground and not from the surface of a screen. Fish articulates a sharp ecological and political stance, along with a personal vulnerability rarely seen in conjunction with those stances. A terrific read and something that may well have staying power in a society, where, as the author reminds us, 'it's always shark week.'"" -Joel Lewis, author of Well You Needn't -""Crater and Tower is a compelling testament to the vital act of listening as Cheryl J. Fish attests to devastation and renewal. 'What you can't fathom finds you, ' she warns. She excavates personal, political, and ecological circumstances to enrich our perspectives and fathom new meaning."" -Lee Upton, author of The Day Every Day Is and Tabitha Get Up

Author Information

Cheryl J. Fish published her debut novel Off the Yoga Mat, in 2022, and in 2021, her collection of poems, The Sauna is Full of Maids, celebrating Finnish sauna culture, friendship, and travel, came out from Shanti Arts. Fish's poems have appeared in Hanging Loose, Maintenant, Terrain, Mom Egg Review, New American Writing, Reed, Postcard poems, Volt, Santa Monica Review, About Place Journal, ISLE, and Poetics for the More-than-Human-World. Fish's short fiction has appeared in Cheap Pop, Iron Horse, Liars League, Spank the Carp, Boog City, Gargoyle, Apricity, and KGB BarLit. She was nominated for a 2024 Pushcart Prize and is a creative writing editor at the journal Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities. She co-curates a reading series, VillageStorySalon, at The New York Public Library and teaches workshops online and in person for Art in the Basin, The Queens Public Library, The San Miguel Writers Conference, and elsewhere. Her website is cheryljfish.com.

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