Add this copy of Mad River to cart. $1.99, like new condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by University of Pittsburgh Press.
Add this copy of Mad River to cart. $1.99, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by University of Pittsburgh Press.
Add this copy of Mad River to cart. $1.99, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by University of Pittsburgh Press.
Add this copy of Mad River (Pitt Poetry Series) to cart. $3.00, like new condition, Sold by Books From California rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Simi Valley, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by University of Pittsburgh Press.
Add this copy of Mad River (Pitt Poetry Series) to cart. $7.00, very good condition, Sold by Chaparral Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Portland, OR, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by University of Pittsburgh Press.
Add this copy of Mad River (Pitt Poetry Series) to cart. $7.09, good condition, Sold by SurplusTextSeller rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Columbia, MO, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by University of Pittsburgh Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. Ships in a BOX from Central Missouri! May not include working access code. Will not include dust jacket. Has used sticker(s) and some writing or highlighting. UPS shipping for most packages, (Priority Mail for AK/HI/APO/PO Boxes).
Add this copy of Mad River (Pitt Poetry Series) to cart. $7.50, very good condition, Sold by Book Alley rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Pasadena, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by University of Pittsburgh Press.
Add this copy of Mad River to cart. $12.03, good condition, Sold by GreatBookPrices rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Columbia, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by University of Pittsburgh Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 64 p. Pitt Poetry. May show signs of wear, highlighting, writing, and previous use. This item may be a former library book with typical markings. No guarantee on products that contain supplements Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. Twenty-five year bookseller with shipments to over fifty million happy customers.
Add this copy of Mad River to cart. $12.74, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 1996 by University of Pittsburgh Press.
On page one of this intense, motorcycle ride through the painful landscape of Beatty?s experience, we are introduced to her birth mother, and her illegitimate conception. Like many of the poems in this collection, the story unfurls like a blossom, savage yet unsentimental. The birth mother?s longing, poverty, and selfishness are all rendered with deft strokes, as well as her own summation: "Should I say you did your best,/ a spare girl from a broken family,/ or should I say it straight?you wanted it, you took it, like we all do..."
Winner of the 1994 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, Mad River chugs madly through the heart of us, as the title portends. In the poem Mad River, Beatty refers to her heart pumping its mad river while kissing a greyhound bus driver for food, enduring his unwanted touch for sustenance, making us cringe in horror as if we were sitting in the back seat: we can smell the hot vinyl in the dark chevy, we are queasy at the image she evokes with "...wanting to spit up the dark beans,/ their reddish bodies staining my insides like a dead baby/..."
What Beatty offers in this collection is a visceral trip through her inner landscape, and there we meet abused children, stripped of power; prisoners rotting in cells with no language; sexual predators disguised as doctors. We meet her mistakes, lapses in judgment, as in Highway 99, when she finds herself alone with a convicted rapist, in his lair, her "...high fading like a wicked joke." Beatty again and again slaps us awake and says LOOK! Don?t look away!
We also meet in this collection her deep heart, her intrinsic goodness. She cares deeply and unabashedly for people. She lets it break her heart, then shows us her wounds so we can feel it too. In one of my favorite of her poems, Ravenous Blue, she is visiting her friend who is dying of AIDS. In the spaces between the words they don?t say, she paints a picture of a happier time they shared, connecting the past and present with the color blue. In the end though, she comes back, "...I?m so sorry we are here, and this is you, dying."
Beatty?s use of color in this collection is fugal, and serves to remind us of her great technical talent. Torrid red, ravenous blue, cobalt blue all make appearances, and reappear: ravenous blue hair dye and the ravenous blue tongue in the poem, Free World. Forbidden pleasures are deep blue in Blue Dress, and the red dress means desire in Love Poem. There is also blood-colored lipstick, yellow stamen, an orange-red peach, the sweet rich green in Breaking the Skin. But Black is the color she does the best.
A good poet can bring a reader to new thoughts, new ideas with the power of their language; a great poet can bring you there, then make you cry, make you squirm, and hold you there. Beatty is of the latter group, and then some. She holds your face to it, but you love her for it.
