Destroying Angel

Nancy Eimers grew up in a suburb outside Chicago during the Cold War era when sirens and bomb shelters prepared children for unimaginable disaster in the midst of ordinary life. She learned that "terror was commonplace," as it was for Anne Frank watching and waiting from her attic hideaway. In this first collection of her poetry, Eimers portrays a world obsessed by death, "where teacups wait to shatter/and breath is a small rash promise." Poems on Hiroshima, Yucca Flats, and graveyards dwell on this directly, while in others death is never far beneath the surface, a fatal fascination. Fervent rituals of everydayness try to deny death's constant imminence, yet its presence overshadows life. "And if what makes the world/a terrible place for kids is the little/maybe, no wonder/we live in it vague and unpestering," she writes. These are powerful, disturbing poems that offer no easy response to death, only the occasional bit of friendship or love and the realization that "for now, all we can do is take care of each other/from the outside."Eimers, Nancy is the author of 'Destroying Angel' with ISBN 9780819521941 and ISBN 0819521949.