Overview

In 1971-72, Kathleen Burgess hitchhiked through Mexico, Central and South America with a lover. These poems tell the story. They are hip, astute, sumptuous, simultaneously accessible and cultured, their hint of the classical journey spun with the unique dangers a woman faces on the road, which couldn�t be more timely given recent issues of sexual abuse. Her lyric poems sing of the trek, of love, of time, place, and sensibility. Readers can identify with a young, nubile, daring young woman, indignant about injustice, hungry for the lilt of another language, new foods, and a culture so close yet so far away. The experience transcends the vicarious, in poems so lush, your body slides right in, and wither it goes, the mind and heart follow. Her poems, Chekhovian in their toggle between humor and struggle hardship and sensory opulence, revivify memories. It is no accident, in terms of the gist of the collection, that laughter at times averts tragedy. ↵-Charlene Fix, author of Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat: Poems === Kathleen S. Burgess fashions the world of a couple hitchhiking from the United States into Mexico and then into South America: �From the mirage of puddle and sky, / a black Cadillac emerges. Pulls to the berm, / blows up a storm cloud of grit and sting.� Burgess�s poems delight and entertain and remind us of who we are as they herald a respect for the Journey. Hers is a book whose success comes in letting us ride shotgun on a bona fide adventure, one in which �Breezes spray us / in rainbows, rainbows dispersing the heat, the sting of home.� �Roy Bentley, author of Walking with Eve in the Loved City

Full Product Details

9781947504097

Table of Contents

Reviews

In 1971-72, Kathleen Burgess hitchhiked through Mexico, Central and South America with a lover. These poems tell the story. They are hip, astute, sumptuous, simultaneously accessible and cultured, their hint of the classical journey spun with the unique dangers a woman faces on the road, which couldn't be more timely on the issue of sexual abuse. Her lyric poems sing of the trek, of love, of time, place, and sensibility. Readers can identify with a young, nubile, daring young woman, indignant about injustice, hungry for the lilt of another language, new foods, and a culture so close yet so far away. The experience transcends the vicarious, in poems so lush, your body slides right in, and wither it goes, the mind and heart follow. Her poems, Chekhovian in their toggle between humor and struggle hardship and sensory opulence, revivify memories. It is no accident, in terms of the gist of the collection, that laughter at times averts tragedy. Burgess, a musician and music educator, scores her book with motifs: food, sex, recurring characters, the moon, guitars, dancing, and the protagonists' naivet , which puts them at risk but in the end saves them--one of the collection's sweet ironies. And what a memory this poet has for details! What a gift for language! Such memorable verbs: the rooster exults, a highway unspools, trucks shake off night's dew, a black cat melts through shadows. And figures: men pass in their clothing of daily cares, the heart is a woodpecker in a tree. Such incantatory repetitions and masterful turning of lines! Who doesn't love a good story, especially one that reminds us of a generation's youth even while speaking with profound relevance to the present treatment of asylum seekers from Mexico, Central, and South America at our border in 2018? These poems offer a trip, a rush, all taken with a dose of compassion. The breath you feel on the back of your neck is the zeitgeist of an era, one that was, is, and will be again. --Charlene Fix What Burden Do Those Trains Bear Away is an intriguing and evocative travelogue in which Kathleen S. Burgess interweaves the personal and the political in gorgeously lyrical ways. Her sensibilities for social justice and her recognition of the way historical record informs the present never suffer from sentimentality. Burgess's dispatches enunciate the complexities of human experience while subtly embedding hope that there should always be a next time when humanity will do it better. -Rikki Santer, author of Dodge, Tuck, Roll In 1971-72, Kathleen Burgess hitchhiked through Mexico, Central and South America with a lover. These poems tell the story. They are hip, astute, sumptuous, simultaneously accessible and cultured, their hint of the classical journey spun with the unique dangers a woman faces on the road, which couldn't be more timely given recent issues of sexual abuse. Her lyric poems sing of the trek, of love, of time, place, and sensibility. Readers can identify with a young, nubile, daring young woman, indignant about injustice, hungry for the lilt of another language, new foods, and a culture so close yet so far away. The experience transcends the vicarious, in poems so lush, your body slides right in, and wither it goes, the mind and heart follow. Her poems, Chekhovian in their toggle between humor and struggle hardship and sensory opulence, revivify memories. It is no accident, in terms of the gist of the collection, that laughter at times averts tragedy. Burgess, a musician and music educator, scores her book with motifs: food, sex, recurring characters, the moon, guitars, dancing, and the protagonists' naivet , which puts them at risk but in the end saves them--one of the collection's sweet ironies. And what a memory this poet has for details! What a gift for language! Such memorable verbs: the rooster exults, a highway unspools, trucks shake off night's dew, a black cat melts through shadows. And figures: men pass in their clothing of daily cares, the heart is a woodpecker in a tree. Such incantatory repetitions and masterful turning of lines! Who doesn't love a good story, especially one that reminds us of a generation's youth even while speaking with profound relevance to the present treatment of asylum seekers from Mexico, Central, and South America at our border in 2018? These poems offer a trip, a rush, all taken with a dose of compassion. The breath you feel on the back of your neck is the zeitgeist of an era, one that was, is, and will be again. -Charlene Fix, author of Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat: Poems

What Burden Do Those Trains Bear Away is an intriguing and evocative travelogue in which Kathleen S. Burgess interweaves the personal and the political in gorgeously lyrical ways. Her sensibilities for social justice and her recognition of the way historical record informs the present never suffer from sentimentality. Burgess's dispatches enunciate the complexities of human experience while subtly embedding hope that there should always be a next time when humanity will do it better. -Rikki Santer, author of Dodge, Tuck, Roll In 1971-72, Kathleen Burgess hitchhiked through Mexico, Central and South America with a lover. These poems tell the story. They are hip, astute, sumptuous, simultaneously accessible and cultured, their hint of the classical journey spun with the unique dangers a woman faces on the road, which couldn't be more timely given recent issues of sexual abuse. Her lyric poems sing of the trek, of love, of time, place, and sensibility. Readers can identify with a young, nubile, daring young woman, indignant about injustice, hungry for the lilt of another language, new foods, and a culture so close yet so far away. The experience transcends the vicarious, in poems so lush, your body slides right in, and wither it goes, the mind and heart follow. Her poems, Chekhovian in their toggle between humor and struggle hardship and sensory opulence, revivify memories. It is no accident, in terms of the gist of the collection, that laughter at times averts tragedy. Burgess, a musician and music educator, scores her book with motifs: food, sex, recurring characters, the moon, guitars, dancing, and the protagonists' naivete, which puts them at risk but in the end saves them--one of the collection's sweet ironies. And what a memory this poet has for details! What a gift for language! Such memorable verbs: the rooster exults, a highway unspools, trucks shake off night's dew, a black cat melts through shadows. And figures: men pass in their clothing of daily cares, the heart is a woodpecker in a tree. Such incantatory repetitions and masterful turning of lines! Who doesn't love a good story, especially one that reminds us of a generation's youth even while speaking with profound relevance to the present treatment of asylum seekers from Mexico, Central, and South America at our border in 2018? These poems offer a trip, a rush, all taken with a dose of compassion. The breath you feel on the back of your neck is the zeitgeist of an era, one that was, is, and will be again. -Charlene Fix, author of Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat: Poems

In 1971-72, Kathleen Burgess hitchhiked through Mexico, Central and South America with a lover. These poems tell the story. They are hip, astute, sumptuous, simultaneously accessible and cultured, their hint of the classical journey spun with the unique dangers a woman faces on the road, which couldn't be more timely given recent issues of sexual abuse. Her lyric poems sing of the trek, of love, of time, place, and sensibility. Readers can identify with a young, nubile, daring young woman, indignant about injustice, hungry for the lilt of another language, new foods, and a culture so close yet so far away. The experience transcends the vicarious, in poems so lush, your body slides right in, and wither it goes, the mind and heart follow. Her poems, Chekhovian in their toggle between humor and struggle hardship and sensory opulence, revivify memories. It is no accident, in terms of the gist of the collection, that laughter at times averts tragedy. Burgess, a musician and music educator, scores her book with motifs: food, sex, recurring characters, the moon, guitars, dancing, and the protagonists' naivet , which puts them at risk but in the end saves them--one of the collection's sweet ironies. And what a memory this poet has for details! What a gift for language! Such memorable verbs: the rooster exults, a highway unspools, trucks shake off night's dew, a black cat melts through shadows. And figures: men pass in their clothing of daily cares, the heart is a woodpecker in a tree. Such incantatory repetitions and masterful turning of lines! Who doesn't love a good story, especially one that reminds us of a generation's youth even while speaking with profound relevance to the present treatment of asylum seekers from Mexico, Central, and South America at our border in 2018? These poems offer a trip, a rush, all taken with a dose of compassion. The breath you feel on the back of your neck is the zeitgeist of an era, one that was, is, and will be again. -Charlene Fix, author of Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat: Poems What Burden Do Those Trains Bear Away is an intriguing and evocative travelogue in which Kathleen S. Burgess interweaves the personal and the political in gorgeously lyrical ways. Her sensibilities for social justice and her recognition of the way historical record informs the present never suffer from sentimentality. Burgess's dispatches enunciate the complexities of human experience while subtly embedding hope that there should always be a next time when humanity will do it better. -Rikki Santer, author of Dodge, Tuck, Roll

Author Information

Kathleen S. Burgess grew up in Urbana, Ohio, with a love of music and writing. At Ohio State University, she attended teach-ins advocating social justice and joined anti-war protests. Following the 1970 Kent State shootings, she joined boyfriend �Ted� in Washington, D.C., where above their apartment by the zoo, a Salvadoran family told of struggles to escape poverty and death. She and Ted began hitchhiking to South America. Along the way, people sheltered them often in homes without electricity and running water. Ted played guitar while Kathleen collected handmade wind instruments. Artisans taught her tunes she played on those and her silver flute. Her passion for music became a vocation�later teaching students, pre-school through adult in OSU�s Creative Arts Program and in public schools in Columbus and Chillicothe, Ohio, where she and husband Jack raised a son and daughter. After writing poetry for years, she met poet-publisher Jennifer Bosveld and now co-leads Salon Columbus, and workshops with Bistro Poets. She serves as senior editor at�Pudding Magazine, and her poems appear in a wide range of literary journals. A book of poems�The Wonder Cupboard�is forthcoming in 2019. This is her first full-length book.�

Tab Content 6

Countries Available