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Book Cover for: String, Matthew Thorburn

String

Matthew Thorburn

A book-length sequence of poems, Matthew Thorburn's String tells the story of a teenage boy's experiences in a time of war and its aftermath. He loses his family and friends, his home and the life he knew, but survives to tell his story. Written in the boy's fractured, echoing voice--in lines that are frequently enjambed and use almost no punctuation--String embodies his trauma and confusion in a poetic sequence that is part lullaby, part nightmare, but always a music that is uniquely his.

Book Details

  • Publisher: LSU Press
  • Publish Date: Mar 1st, 2023
  • Pages: 84
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.00in - 6.00in - 0.21in - 0.30lb
  • EAN: 9780807179048
  • Categories: American - GeneralSubjects & Themes - Death, Grief, LossSubjects & Themes - Family

About the Author

Haymon, Ava Leavell: - Ava Leavell Haymon is the author of the poetry collections Why the House Is Made of Gingerbread, Kitchen Heat, and The Strict Economy of Fire. She teaches poetry writing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and directs a writers' retreat center in the mountains of New Mexico.

Praise for this book

"String is a stirring bravura performance, a love song and a song of war, a chronicle of damage, a testament to our capacity for perseverance."--Michael Dumanis
"Matthew Thorburn's String is a harrowing and tender unraveling of trauma, in which the brutal (dis)memberments of war are (re)membered through the point of view of a young boy. Here, string functions as mending, as artful stitching of the liminal--both a doing and an undoing, a narrativization of erasures through stories that are both silenced and then sung."--Lee Ann Roripaugh
"No book has moved me as much as String, epic in scope but intimate as a lullaby. These poems remind us that life is not about the wish our hope makes as we toss a coin; it's not that one side of the coin is despair and one side joy; it's the constant flipping of the coin as it falls and the music it makes ringing against the sides of the empty well."--Rhett Iseman Trull