THE WHOLE CATASTROPHE
“In Jami Macarty’s The Whole Catastrophe, every asterisk indicates something precious. Macarty uses the poetic form to create space for what is otherwise omitted: the fresh air outside car windows, the stars blotted out by city infrastructures, a friend gone too soon. Chronicling a road trip to the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, Macarty reflects on fragility, greed and the disasters we must withstand, from toxic feedlots to carbon monoxide poisoning. “We are never very far from an explosion,” she writes, but this is no reason to disengage. Rather, The Whole Catastrophe is a testament to the necessary entanglement of all things. “They can’t out-reverence us,” Macarty writes. Here, resisting destruction means holding onto a sense of wonder, annotating cows in their fields, waving hello to grief, knowing catastrophe like a constellation above.”
–Rosie Long Decter
Author’s Bio
Jami Macarty lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Vancouver, British Columbia, where she teaches contemporary poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University. Jami also works as an independent editor and a writer of essays, reviews, and poetry. Jami is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming, University of Nevada Press), winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. The Whole Catastrophe is Jami’s fourth chapbook. The previous three chapbooks include Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami, her writing practice, and forth- coming publications, visit: www.jamimacarty.com
Author photo: Vincent K. Wong
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