American Purgatory

by Rebecca Gayle Howell

Poetry. Winner of the 2016 Sexton Prize for Poetry (selected by Don Share of Poetry magazine), AMERICAN PURGATORY is a story of the working class, a dystopia set in a near-future United States marked by severe drought, herbicidal warfare, and a totalitarian climate of poverty. This purgatory is populated by those who believe that if they work hard enough, they will be set free. Against this backdrop, three unlikely characters begin a journey that will take them away from work, belief, and even each other, until the protagonist uncovers a truth about this place that indeed sets her free. Equal parts Dante and Cormac McCarthy, AMERICAN PURGATORY is a coming-of-age for capitalism written in the decade of tea-party terror.

Genres: Poetry

60 pages, Paperback

First published February 10, 2017

About the author

Rebecca Gayle Howell is an award-winning writer, translator, and editor. Her Best Book of the Year honors include those from Best Translated Book Awards, Foreword Reviews INDIES Awards, The Banipal Prize, Ms. Magazine, Library Journal, Book Riot, and Poets & Writers. Among Howell's awards are the United States Artists Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, the Carson McCullers Fellowship, and two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Reviews

[Jennifer Ashton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I became really fascinated with Howell's previous volume of poetry, Render / An Apocalypse and taught it a couple of times in my contemporary poetry classes (also wrote about it in a short essay for John Hay's Apocalypse in American Literature volume that came out in late 2020 with Cambridge UP). American Purgatory is a really interesting volume -- even more apocalyptic in its orientation -- that emulates in very explicit ways a kind of mashup of Cormac McCarthy (there's even a figure called The Kid, clearly an allusion to McCarthy's Blood Meridian, set in the 19th century who resembles more closely the boy in the post-apocalyptic setting of The Road). Howell situates her characters not in prose but in a lyric sequence in tercets (one of the book's many nods to Dante). The sequence is set in Howell's own version of an inhospitable post-catastrophe world inching toward full human and mammal extinction. Haven't got a handle on this new work yet, but I'm looking forward to developing one with my students this semester.

[Avery Guess · Rating 5 out of 5]

The words that came to mind as I was reading Rebecca Gayle Howell's dystopian poetry collection, AMERICAN PURGATORY, were incantory, divine, revelatory. The characters in this book - an unnamed woman, Slade, Little, the Kid, and others are living their lives in a near-future hellscape of the American South that is riddled with drought ("Water is a ghost.") and poisons dropped on the population. Work is all there is left - "Quiet, the labor; quiet the greed." Everything is about "Commerce. Every action, exchange." Brutes, those born different, "are put / to work in the fields, bent over their secrets; swollen heads / bobbing in and out the rows" and in this sterile land, "no one gives birth here anymore." Yet even in this place of intense loneliness and emptinesss there is the heat shimmer of hope, "Touch is water, / when it's kind, a cool pool I can drink and sink / down into, resurrect out, rise up, rise up." Wonderful follow-up to Howell's previous collection, RENDER. Highly recommend.

[Richard S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Occasionally I grab the #1 poetry bestseller from the SPD list if it seems intriguing and this one was irresistable.

And wow. Wow. This is like having all the rural and religious power of Flannery O'Connor condensed into a future dystopic poetry-world, a series of amazing, powerful prose-poems telling a totally messed up Philip Dick-future Black Mirror monstrous reflection of the present. This is insanely good, totally relevant, and powerful stuff. It has a wild creativity and originality too, not just in content but in style, crazed and effective use of punctuation and italics. I strongly recommend not only to poets looking for a fresh and disturbing contemporary voice but those who are into futuristic fiction and really imaginative writing. Winner of the 2016 Sexton Prize but this should be put up for more.

[Melissa Helton · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a book you almost need to finish in one sitting. It's hard to have a narrative collection of poetry that develops characters and story because if one poem is taken out of context of the collection, they can be disorienting or ungrounded. The poems in this collection carry enough emotional energy and atmospheric currency though that even out of context, there is much to experience and been unsettled by. And of course, IN context, it is all so disquieting. Powerful collection.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this. Shorter than I thought. I couldn’t find whether or not it was a “sequence” necessarily, but it reads like a hellish version of Glück’s Wild Iris. These poems felt like polaroids that, while still developing, were pressed into each other and borrowed contents from others.

[Mya · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is really fantastic and really unique. only about 50 pages so its a quick read but in that span of time, these poems create a desperate, dystopian image of a near-future we, humans, have created for ourselves. its dark it’s beautiful its moving its well written. 10/10 definitely read this

[Mick Parsons · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the way Howell tells a story. Her work, beginning with Render: An Apocalypse (my personal introduction to her work) is an exegesis of the rural experience at the start of the 21st century.

[Sarah Key · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful work. And now I'm on a mission to find more poetry manuscripts about capitalism.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gorgeous hymn of a collection is breath-stopping, but Howell teaches us how to breathe again by paying attention to ourselves and to our history. This collection paints a stark American landscape which could be apocalyptic if it weren't so familiar.