If you’ve already ordered Nana Lampton’s multi-genre, hardcover collection Wash the Dust From My Eyes, it will ship this Friday, January 15th. If you haven’t pre-ordered a copy, copies are still available!
In this first-of-its-kind collection of nonfiction, poetry, art and photography 100 years in the making, Nana Lampton combines the journal entries of her grandfather—a World War I cavalryman uncertain about the future the war holds, yet ready to play his part—with her own poetry inspired by his writing. As she reaches back through a century to see the world from his perspective, Lampton invites the words of Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius to illustrate the timelessness of feelings that we can all appreciate—apprehension, ambition, camaraderie, and love—in the face of war and in the hope for what comes after.
What others are saying:
Nana Lampton creates a moving meditation on war and its brutal mechanization in the 20th century, capturing the idealism and dutifulness of the young, the tedium of camp life, and the anachronism of cavalry on the eve of ‘the war to end all wars.’ These voices, these poems, chime.
—Richard Taylor
Through John Mason’s history, we see the outer man of a cavalry captain training for the Great War. But through her poetry, we view also his imagined inner soul and the unimaginable horrors of war. The result is a powerful journey that all should take.
—James C. Klotter
Ultimately, these literal entries, ancient lines, and her lyrical envisioning of her grandfather’s life become one sinuous keening utterance of the desperation of man at war and the cherished triumph of love over all.
—Jeanie Thompson