The Color of Mesabi Bones
by John Caddy
The Color of Mesabi Bones centers on the survival and healing
strategies of a boy trying to become a human being in an alcoholic,
violent family, set in a mining town which mirrors and encourages this
kind of family.
Contributors: Engravings by R.W. Scholes
John Caddy
Author's Bio:Award-winning poet and educator John Caddy is the author of The Color
of Mesabi Bones (Milkweed Editions, 1989), a Los Angeles Times Book
Prize winner for poetry, and Eating the Sting (Milkweed Editions,
1986). His "Earth Journal" poems circulate daily to teachers,
naturalists, artists, and students around the world. A founder of
Minnesota's Poets in the Schools program, Caddy has taught poetry to
adults and children in over eight hundred settings over the course of
forty years.
Awards:Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry, 1990
Minnesota Book Award Winner, 1991 Quotes:“The Color of Mesabi Bones confronts with clear and unsentimental
language the harsh truths that run through families and generations and
lives, like ferrous streaks in hard soil. Beyond the looping cycles of
pain and mystery and casual cruelty of the “human condition' —and you
can believe he's been there —Caddy comes to peace with the tender self
that's lived through it all.” —Tom Clark, San Francisco Examiner
“Caddy's
imaginative power is more than magical realism. When it snows in his
prose poems, the world turns white. And there's a tension in his
metaphors that heals the heart.” —Gerald Vizenor, Minneapolis Star
Tribune
“The Color of Mesabi Bones is a gift, and a generous
one.... Caddy shares with you the process of being made and then making
yourself, being powerless and taking power.” —Layeh Bock/Pallant,
Poetry Flash
“Caddy's collection of poems is written from the
experience of growing up in a tough family in , at times , a very tough
community, and in a harsh region. There is a bittersweet appreciation
for the place and the people of his youth.” —Los Angeles Times Book
Review
“Fluid and accessible, Caddy's poems carefully detail the
milieu of several generations of Minnesota miners, men who yearn for
sport and assume that “boys are fair game.'” —Publishers Weekly
“There
is a new form of autobiographical poetry in America today, one that
seeks to forgive rather than to be foregiven, which was often the case
with the earlier confessional poets. Julia Wendell, Linda Hogan, Albert
Goldbarth--in recording pain, they reach past blame and anger into a
sad understanding. That, too, is the feat of John Caddy in this
sterling collection.... These poems cut like glass shards. The pain of
wounded children cries throughout them. Caddy's genius is to make us
pity the betrayed child in the father as much as we love the children
he batters.” —Booklist |
