Audubon's Sparrow: A Biography-In-Poems

Juditha Dowd

ISBN 10: 1941628214 / ISBN 13: 9781941628218

Published by ROSE METAL PR, 2020

About this Item

Zustand: Hervorragend | Sprache: Englisch | Produktart: Bücher | Nimbly written and sympathetically rendered, Audubon's Sparrow is an enchanting blend of research and imagination--an indelible portrait of an American woman--Lucy Bakewell Audubon--in need of rediscovery.

Seller Inventory # 36597746/1

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Audubon's Sparrow: A Biography-In-Poems
• Publisher: ROSE METAL PR
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1941628214
• ISBN 13: 9781941628218
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Hervorragend
• Seller catalogs:
  • Bücher

About this title

Synopsis

Poetry. Epistolary. Biography. American History. Hybrid Genre. Women's Studies. What does it mean to sacrifice for someone else's art? Audubon's Sparrow answers this question by way of a verse biography of Lucy Bakewell, the intrepid and largely unsung wife of the artist and naturalist John James Audubon. Set in the early decades of the 19th century, an era of dramatic growth and expansion in America, the book follows Lucy and John James as they fall in love, marry, and set off to make a life on the western frontier.

Juditha Dowd weaves together lyric poems, imagined letters, and diary entries in Lucy's voice with excerpts from Audubon's journals and published works (which many believe Lucy helped to write and edit) to offer an intimate exploration of the thoughts of a young wife and mother. Moving from port to port along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, Lucy struggles to square the family's poverty with her husband's desire to abandon business and pursue his passion for nature. In a time when women are rarely permitted to work outside the home, Lucy draws on her education and musical talents to become a teacher, freeing Audubon to travel abroad seeking a publisher for The Birds of America. As she wards off financial ruin, Lucy's natural confidence and independence emerge, along with a very different life from the one she expected. Nimbly written and sympathetically rendered, Audubon's Sparrow is an enchanting blend of research and imagination—an indelible portrait of an American woman in need of rediscovery.

About the Author

Juditha Dowd is the author of the poetry books Audubon's Sparrow: A Biography-in-Poems (Rose Metal Press, 2020) and Mango in Winter (Grayson Books, 2013), as well as short fiction, lyric essays and three poetry chapbooks—The Weathermancer (Finishing Line, 2006), What Remains (Finishing Line, 2009) and Back Where We Belong (Casa de Cinco Hermanas, 2012). Her work appears in many journals and anthologies, including Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, The Florida Review, Spillway, Rock & Sling, Kestrel, and About Place. With the ensemble Cool Women she regularly performs poetry in the New York-Philadelphia metro area and occasionally on the West Coast. Juditha currently lives in Easton, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two cats, not far from where Lucy Bakewell began her long-ago adventure with John James Audubon.