Crude: Poems About Place, Energy, and Politics

by Taylor Brorby

The Midwest Oil Fields are full of stories. Crude is a manifesto for people battling issues of environmental devastation, Taylor Brorby's Crude explores what it means to be from and of a place. Through natural history, personal experience, and a sense of awe, these poems explore the northern Great Plains its troubled history, extractive economies, and what roots us to the places we call home. In this determined collection, these poems examine everything from the pallid sturgeon and General Custer, to prostitutes and wildcatters. Through his love of the land, Brorby unearths and wrestles with the complicated place that he calls home.

Genres: Poetry

92 pages, Paperback

Published April 19, 2017

About the author

Taylor Brorby is the author of Boys and Oil: Growing up gay in a fractured land, Crude: Poems, Coming Alive: Action and Civil Disobedience, and co-editor of Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Book Critics Circle, the MacDowell Colony, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Mesa Refuge, Blue Mountain Center, and the North Dakota Humanities Council.

Taylor’s work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Orion Magazine, The Arkansas International, Southern Humanities Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and numerous anthologies. He is a contributing editor at North American Review.

Taylor regularly speaks around the country on issues related to extractive economies, queerness, disability, and climate change. He is the Annie Tanner Clark Fellow in Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah.

Reviews

[Oz Paszkiewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely adored the imagery in this collection especially the poem "radical" where Brorby describes worms eating pathways through his dead body and equates that to traveling. Brorby has such a way with language that relates the body to earth and connects humanity with its home. Really excited to read more. It's poets like Brorby that make me fall in love with words again.