THE WISHING TOMB is a love letter to a city that has been defined by its travails and triumphs.  New Orleans, that quintessential city of jazz and yellow fevers, of hurricanes and Creole cuisine, is integral to America’s cultural, urban, and historical landscape.  This collection is a narrative of place, but more than that, these poems create a portrait of us all: how connected we are to the land we love and to our homes, how history sometimes escapes us, and how even in our tragedies, we can be made whole again by rebuilding and moving forward.

 

Praised by the judges for the poet’s ability to find those moments in a long history that magnify images of strangeness, irony, and wonder, and create a lush, present, and morally serious whole.  The writing has momentum, formal attention, and is obsessive in the best way.

 

Amanda Auchter teaches creative writing and literature at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas.  She is also the founding editor of Pebble Lake Review.  This is her second book.

 

THE WISHING TOMB will be released in September 2012.