Emma Saves Her Life, Poems by Naton Leslie
The
inimitable protagonist of Naton Leslie's Emma Saves Her Life has
indeed saved her life: every moment of it, seemingly, and rendered lovingly
by the author in technique that goes beyond narrative and monologue to verse
transcription: a seemingly literal rendering of Emma's voice, preserving both
her life and her character in resonant lines.
"If the past is forgotten, then one who speaks from that distance becomes an oracle revealing passions and struggles as mysterious as the unmade future. Through Naton Leslie's crafting, the poet becomes a ventriloquist who invents an alternative self. The merging of voices creates a clairvoyance that compels us to read, eager to hear more. Through Leslie's poems, letters and stories from his grandmother Emma become the narratives of an Appalachian sibyl who gives us strange visions of the ordinary and humorous insights into the strange. Leslie has excavated from Emma's world an unconsciously poetic voice from a lost landscape. This book delivers the truth that each life, lived genuinely and long, is an epic tale."--Stuart Bartow, author of Whelk, The Perseids, Mythology of Stone, and Reasons to Hate the Sky.
"Open this book and relish it as you would a jar of Grandma's preserves--if Grandma did things like smack someone who insulted her pie crust 'right on/ the boil' (see the first poem). Naton Leslie has inherited from this grandmother a plainspoken devotion 'to tell it all' ('Emma Has Her Say'), in an indelible voice without a shred of sentimentality. Lovingly braiding together her letters and scrapbooks with his own keen poetic invention, Leslie saves for us an unforgettable woman's life, one that spanned the 20th century: rather than watch TV, she says, 'I'd rather/ get lost in making something' ('Emma Lists a Few Certainties'). I wish this book were required reading for all U.S. high school students. Give it to people who think they hate poetry, and change their minds. What Emma says of her rag rugs goes for her grandson's poems as well: they 'will wear and wear/ no matter how hard you use/ them' ('Emma Is Surprised While Doing Chores')."--Barbara Louise Ungar, winner of the Gival Press Poetry Award for The Origin of the Milky Way, author of Thrift
"As she says herself, 'Live long enough...and anyone has a story to tell,' but Emma, from a culture of hard fact, where nothing goes to waste, nothing is thrown away, has hundreds. Constantly reaffirming, preserving what is human and most vulnerable from being lost to memory; more importantly, she marvelously restores it."--Macdara Woods, author of Notes from the Country of Blood-Red Flowers, Selected Poems, The Nightingale Water and Water in the Blood
Naton Leslie is the author of a book of narrative nonfiction, That Might Be Useful (Lyon Press, 2005), and five volumes of poetry: Three Shadows Are Dark Daughters (1998), Moving to Find Work (2000), Salvaged Maxims (2002), Egress (2004), and The Last Best Motif (2004). A collection of his short fiction, Marconi's Dream and Other Stories (2003), won the George Garrett Fiction Prize, and he is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He teaches writing and literature at Siena College, in Loudonville, New York. He lives in Ballston Spa, New York, with his wife Susan and their family.
ISBN: 978-1933456812, 160 pages, $18.00