Overview

"Will There Also Be Singing, Pauletta Hansel's tenth collection, contains poems of witness and protest. Poems include those written in the voices of those living and working in Hansel's native Appalachia, as well as those exploring this nation's current racial, political and class injustices and divisions. The poet speaks to her own culpability and complicated grief about a land she loves and for whose future she fears. ""Pauletta Hansel's Will There Also Be Singing? could be subtitled 'Found Poems, Centos, and Other Songs Woven from the World Around Us.' In this collection of poems, the former (and first) Poet Laureate of Cincinnati writes a poetry of witness about her native Appalachia and her country as a whole that is also a master class on how to work with collage. Much like Kentucky artist Robert Morgan, whose sculptures are made from an accretion of found objects, Hansel takes news clippings and historical essays, poems, and social media posts and places them next to each other and layers them on top of each other until a poem emerges."" -Jeremy Paden, Professor of Spanish, Chair, Humanities Division, Transylvania University, and author of World As Sacred Burning Heart "

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9781945049415

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"""Reader, you are holding a remarkable & much-needed book. Will There Also Be Singing? is Pauletta Hansel's bold reckoning with the causes & consequences of the 2022 flood in eastern Kentucky. This is her home territory. She knows its topography, its people, & its history well. In the tradition of Muriel Rukeyser's The Book of the Dead, which interrogates the workers sacrificed to build the Gauley Mountain tunnel, Hansel goes beyond her own voice to document the crimes which led to the flood, incorporating [social media] posts, lines from other poets, & excerpts from news reports & magazine articles to bring us close to those suffering through the disaster. In the closing lines of 'Aerial View of the Catastrophic Flooding, ' her speakers call us to use our collective voices. Poetry is Pauletta Hansel's way of doing that work. Don't miss the strength & challenge she offers us."" -George Ella Lyon, Kentucky Poet Laureate 2015-2016 and author of Back to the Light ""Pauletta Hansel's Will There Also Be Singing? could be subtitled 'Found Poems, Centos, and Other Songs Woven from the World Around Us.' In this collection of poems, the former (and first) Poet Laureate of Cincinnati writes a poetry of witness about her native Appalachia and her country as a whole that is also a master class on how to work with collage. Much like Kentucky artist Robert Morgan, whose sculptures are made from an accretion of found objects, Hansel takes news clippings and historical essays, poems, and social media posts and places them next to each other and layers them on top of each other until a poem emerges."" -Jeremy Paden, Professor of Spanish, Chair, Humanities Division, Transylvania University, and author of World As Sacred Burning Heart ""I have been working in the coalfields of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky for more than fifty years. I interviewed survivors of the Buffalo Creek flood in Logan County, West Virginia, in 1972. I have worked on Quicksand Creek in Breathitt County, Kentucky, following a flood caused by mountaintop removal mining. I have watched miners testify in trials regarding their black lung disease, while needing to use oxygen tanks to simply breathe. I have heard their stories through the words of their wives and children and how these men kept on working to provide a home and an education for those children. In Will There Also Be Singing?, Pauletta Hansel has given us the voices of these people in a way that is unlike any writer of our time. She has given us their grace, dignity, and beauty in their clear and lyrical speech. The poet James Still would have said of Pauletta Hansel, 'She is the real deal.'"" -Jack Spadaro, West Virginia coalfield conservation and mine safety activist"

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