ABOUT THIS BOOK

Stylistically innovative, deeply moving, carefully researched, Martha Collins’s eleventh volume of poetry combines her well-known attention to social issues with the elegiac mode of her previous book. She focuses here on race, gun violence, recent wars, and, in an extended sequence, the history of coal—first as her ancestors mined it, then from its geological origins to our ecologically threatened present. Casualty Reports is both indictment and lament, a work that speaks forcefully to our troubled history and our present times.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Martha Collins is the author of ten previous collections of poetry, most recently Because What Else Could I Do, which won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. Previous volumes include Blue Front, White Papers, Admit One: An American Scrapbook, and the paired volumes Day unto Day and Night unto Night. She has also cotranslated four volumes of Vietnamese poetry and coedited several anthologies.

REVIEWS

PAST PRAISE:

"A dazzling poet whose poetry is poised at the juncture between the lyric and ethics. Her 2006 book-length examination of the history of lynching, Blue Front, is the first serious attempt by a white poet to examine this horrific aspect of the history of American racism." —Cynthia Hogue, AWP Chronicle

"In White Papers, "her daring new collection, Collins subjects herself to an unrelenting inquisition on the subject of race. As thoroughly researched as a textbook, yet as gripping as the best of memoirs.” —Megan Marshall, Radcliffe Quarterly

"Admit One: An American Scrapbook is "a strikingly original collection that combines brilliant storytelling and compelling commentary on ethics and race." —Elizabeth Lund, Washington Post

"Collins renders the most humbling, gorgeous, and inscrutable features of human existence as if they might be made legible." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

LEGACY

In Illinois

Do You Want to Be a Mine Examiner?

A History of American Coal through the Lens of Illinois

Movie

Du Quoin

Herrin

Virden

Store

Note

Chute

Two Little Miners

REPORTS

The Dudley Bus

Rehearsal

Lamentations

LEGACY

Grave

A History

And the Revolution We Call the

Types of Coal Mines

Now That’s Big

Whose

Burning

They

Model Miners

Conference of the Parties

Blessing

REPORTS

War War

For Gaza

Shackled

Not Being There

Blue

To Leave No

Like Her Body the World

And Bright Stars

Tiny Women

AND ALSO

Again Later

The Gray House

Called

After Song

L’Ultimo Viaggio

Of Late

Passing

Inscription for a Pool

Notes

Gratitude

REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you with an electronic file for alternative access.

Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.

It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.