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No Simple Wilderness
These spare, haunting poems evoke the lost towns and villages that were flooded in the 1930's to create the Quabbin Reservoir in Western Massachusetts to provide drinking water for Boston. Interspersed with the poems are the voices of "survivors" who comment on what was lost and gained, and the lyric voice of the poet who meditates on her own ties to this wilderness area.
Jane Brox writes in the Foreword, "...these poems attain a seamlessness not only between the past and present, but between personal and public as well, a seamlessness that is succinct, powerful, and entirely essential."
No Simple Wilderness has been used as a text for college courses that explore the connection between poetry, the environment,and history. It is available through the author's website:
http://www.gailthomaspoet.com
Jane Brox writes in the Foreword, "...these poems attain a seamlessness not only between the past and present, but between personal and public as well, a seamlessness that is succinct, powerful, and entirely essential."
No Simple Wilderness has been used as a text for college courses that explore the connection between poetry, the environment,and history. It is available through the author's website:
http://www.gailthomaspoet.com
39 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
11 people want to read
About the author
Gail Thomas
7 books3 followersPoet and teacher Gail Thomas has published six books: Trail of Roots (2022), Leaving Paradise (2022),Odd Mercy (2016), Waving Back (2015), No Simple Wilderness: An Elegy for Swift River Valley (2001) and Finding the Bear (1997).
Trail of Roots won the A.V. Christie Series of Seven Kitchens Press, Odd Mercy was chosen by Ellen Bass for the Charlotte Mew Prize of Headmistress Press, and its “Little Mommy Sonnets” won Honorable Mention for the Tom Howard/ Margaret Reid Prize for Traditional Verse. Also, Waving Back was named a Must Read for 2016 by the Massachusetts Center for the Book and Honorable Mention in the New England Book Festival.
Thomas’s work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Calyx, The North American Review, Hanging Loose, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Individual poems have won the Naugatuck Review’s Narrative Poetry Prize, the Edward Hearst Prize, and the Pat Schneider Poetry Prize. Several poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and she was awarded residencies at The McDowell Colony and Ucross.
Her book, No Simple Wilderness, about the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir in the 1930’s has been taught in college courses. As one of the original teaching artists for the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Elder Arts Initiative, Thomas led workshops and collaborated with dancers, musicians and storytellers in schools, nursing homes, hospitals and libraries across the state.
Thomas teaches poetry with Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshops, speaks at conferences and poetry festivals, and reads her work widely in community and academic settings.
Trail of Roots won the A.V. Christie Series of Seven Kitchens Press, Odd Mercy was chosen by Ellen Bass for the Charlotte Mew Prize of Headmistress Press, and its “Little Mommy Sonnets” won Honorable Mention for the Tom Howard/ Margaret Reid Prize for Traditional Verse. Also, Waving Back was named a Must Read for 2016 by the Massachusetts Center for the Book and Honorable Mention in the New England Book Festival.
Thomas’s work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Calyx, The North American Review, Hanging Loose, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Individual poems have won the Naugatuck Review’s Narrative Poetry Prize, the Edward Hearst Prize, and the Pat Schneider Poetry Prize. Several poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and she was awarded residencies at The McDowell Colony and Ucross.
Her book, No Simple Wilderness, about the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir in the 1930’s has been taught in college courses. As one of the original teaching artists for the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Elder Arts Initiative, Thomas led workshops and collaborated with dancers, musicians and storytellers in schools, nursing homes, hospitals and libraries across the state.
Thomas teaches poetry with Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshops, speaks at conferences and poetry festivals, and reads her work widely in community and academic settings.
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