Vertically Coastal: Poems by Jerri Chaplin - Softcover

Jerri Chaplin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1614680329 ISBN 13: 9781614680321

Publisher: Planet Media Books, 2011

Synopsis

Vertically Coastal is divided into two sections: one each on Charleston, S.C., and The Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Poet Jerri Chaplin and her husband, Peter, spend time there alternately, from late fall to early spring "down there" and early spring to late fall "up here." South to North, then North to South: The poet's dual residency has shaped two reciprocal experiences of locale that together form a unified whole, a life that she shares in this book.

Chaplin's poems are about destinations. To paraphrase Robert Louis Stevenson, Chaplin writes about having arrived more than traveling hopefully. The biannual trip from Charleston, S.C., to Pittsfield, Mass., transports her from one life to the other. Like a saint of old, she's known for the art of bi-location. Yes, readers, there is no end to the poet's ability.

The poems in Vertically Coastal address the lives she lives in each of these beautiful destinations. These two lives are existential dualities that unite to make her the person she is, was, and will be. Like intersecting circles, they overlap. Readers of this book will find themselves under a spell cast from elements of the vestigial Rebel South and the enduring Yankee North. In Vertically Coastal, there's no War of Northern Aggression or Civil War. South and North come together, reconciled. In this book, you come to meet and know a Person.

-- Dan Valenti, adapted from his introduction.

Jerri Chaplin is a certified poetry therapist and poet. She served as the first poet-in-residence at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston (1996). Her work has been widely published and anthologized, and her poems have won many awards, including honors from the Poetry Society of South Carolina. For two years, Chaplin served as vice president of the National Association for Poetry Therapy and received that organization's Outstanding Achievement Award (1999).

About this edition

• Publisher: Planet Media Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1614680329
• ISBN 13: 9781614680321
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 116
• Editor: Dan Valenti