The Red List: A Poem

by Stephen Cushman

The "red list" of Stephen Cushman's new volume of poetry is the endangered species register, and the book begins and ends with the bald eagle, a bird that bounded back from the verge of extinction. The volume marks the inevitability of such changes, from danger to safety, from certainty to uncertainty, from joy to sadness and back again. In a single poem that advances through wordplay and association, Cushman meditates on subjects as vast as the earth's fragile ecosystem and as small as the poet's own deflated fantasy of "There aren't any jobs for more Jeremiahs."

Simultaneously teasing the present and eulogizing what has been lost, Cushman speaks like a Shakespearean jester, freely and foolishly, but with penetrating insight.

88 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2014

About the author

Stephen Cushman is Robert C. Taylor Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Reviews

[Serena · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF, no matter how many times I've gone back to this; I just get bored and distracted and put it down. I like the concept just not the execution