Overview

Having traveled to all 50 United States, author Jenny Morse has written one poem for each. The postal code for the state is capitalized in the titles, which expand those two letters into a word that grounds the poems' content. The poems are formatted in squares, as if written on a postcard and dropped into the mail along her travels. The square format is also representative of the somewhat arbitrary and historic ways in which the states have been shaped and delineated, their boundaries a result of landscape and negotiation. The poems are best understood as lyrical odes. Traditional odes have been written to a ""you"" who is the adored subject. In this case, the ""you"" is the state itself, an experience of the place as the traveler passes through. The poems vary in their focus, reflecting the experience and memory of the author as she visited each state. They also often explore some of the landscape and natural elements. For example, the opening poem, MarinE, is set in Maine, where the author attended Bowdoin College and often visited the natural formation referred to as the Giant Steps. This poem imagines the Giant Steps as the means whales used to go from land mammals to sea mammals. Alternatively, some of the poems explore historical relationships, as in pRovIdence, set in Rhode Island, a state that was founded when Roger Williams and his followers (among them Anne Hutchinson) settled the area to escape religious persecution. TiN, for Tennessee, is a reimagining of Wallace Steven's poem ""Anecdote of the Jar."" And ARrangement, for Arkansas, is based on a family trip when they took the train south from Wisconsin because her little brother wanted to dig for diamonds.

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