No Simple Wilderness: An Elegy for Swift River Valley (2001, Haleys)
These spare poems evoke the haunting nature of the Quabbin Reservoir wilderness area created in the 1930's when four towns and seven villages were razed and flooded to provide drinking water for Boston. More than 3,500 people were displaced from the Swift River Valley in western Massachusetts.
“Sometimes a work of poetry is an act of reclamation as it is in No Simple Wilderness. With these poems, Thomas attains a seamlessness not only between past and present but between personal and public, a seamlessness that is succinct, powerful, and entirely essential." – Jane Brox |
To order a signed copy of No Simple Wilderness: email Gail or send a check or money order for $12 + $2.00 postage to Gail Thomas, 51 Gleason Rd., Northampton, MA 01060