Tacoma Narrows (Paperback)

Paperback. In Tacoma Narrows, Mitchell Parry reflects on the nature of disasters, both public and private. A reflection on things lost, Parry allows himself to feel deeply, to ask what went wrong and to ruminate tragic moments with humility and romantic sensibility. Acutely aware of the nature that surrounds him, Parry embraces things like the wind howling at his window, an elk in the backyard or an orange sunset, and attaches them to memories. A deep mediation in three parts, Tacoma Narrows is a consideration on how we weather storms, the "currents, turmoil, vortices" of life and recognizing that one is "still learning to let lost things stay lost." The result is a courageous, moving and deeply personal collection that asks us to realise that letting things go is the hardest thing disasters of all kinds demand of us, but it's also perhaps the most important lesson they can teach us. Mitchell Parry reflects on the nature of disasters, both public and private, in his debut collection. The title poem is a meditation on the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a catastrophe that reminds us that ?we live in the depths of a fluid / world.? Tacoma Narrows also explores tragedy on a more personal scale ? the deaths, divorces, and other griefs that affect us all. Set in locales as diverse as England, Yugoslavia, Greece, and the small Outer Gulf Islands of British Columbia, these haunting lyrics express the experience of ?still learning to let lost things stay lost.? Parry con-siders how we weather the storms, the ?currents, turmoil, vortices? of life, finding, at last, a possibility of hope in the creation of real and imaginary communities. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability. …