The Afflicted Girls: Poems - Softcover

Nicole Cooley (Author)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807129461 ISBN 13: 9780807129463

Publisher: LSU Press, 2004

Synopsis

Twenty individuals were executed and more than 150 imprisoned. The historical body of evidence that remains from the Salem witch trials of 1692 touched the hands, mind, and imagination of poet Nicole Cooley, compelling her to seek entry to an inaccessible past of lies. The Afflicted Girls, so named after the young women who claimed to be victims of witch-craft, spans the centuries to give voice to those both audible and silent on history's pages - accusers and accused of several kinds: wife and husband, servant and master, congregant and minister, and, not least, bewitched and witch. Piercing, enchanting, Cooley's poems form a remarkable narrative, one that displays the enormous cultural power the Salem witch trials retain in twenty-first-century America.

About this title

Review:

"Cooley has summoned the discipline and the craft to maintain a perilous balance between historical researcher and poet. This is a deeply absorbing and powerful rendition of a story whose own power has been too much for some writers."

About the Author:

A native of New Orleans, NICOLE COOLEY is the author of Resurrection, which won the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, and the novel Judy Garland, Ginger Love. Her other honors include Georgia Poet of the Year in 1997, the Balch Prize for Poetry from the Virginia Quarterly Review, and the "Discovery"/The Nation Poetry Award. She lives in New Jersey and is an associate professor of English and directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0807129461
• ISBN 13: 9780807129463
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 250