Overwinter [Paperback]

A debut collection from an exciting new voice in Alaska poetry,Overwinterreconciles the natural quiet of wilderness with the clamor of built environments. Jeremy Pataky’s migration between Anchorage and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park inspires these poems that connect urban to rural. This duality permeatesOverwinter.Moments are at turns fevered or serene. The familial and romantic are measured against the wildness of the Far North. Empty spaces bring both solace and loneliness in full. Past loves haunt the present, surviving in the spaces sculpted by language.

Jeremy Patakyis vice president of the 49 Alaska Writing Center. He divides his time between Anchorage and the town of McCarthy.

I.
Five Parts
Manual Labor in the Era of Delinquent Weather
We Were Explorers Once
Then to Now
Reasons for a Long Stay
Antidote
Wood Heat
Runoff
 
II.
A Brief History of Landing Here
The Particulars of the Built Environment
Counting Down to a Destination within Bliss
Barometric Pressure
Here We Are
Fire in the Succession Zones
From Here You Seem a Braided River
Screen
Aural
 
III.
Fata Morgana
 
IV.
Surveying
Contemplation, Composition, Interpretation
Modernity
How the Mistress, Distressed, Insinuated Herself into Place
Succession
In Review
Field Work
 
V.
After This Life
Address from a Far-off Hill
Trash Burning
The Smallest Ice Age
Inroad
Ablation Zone
Traverse
Thumbnail Spring Song
Sky Behind Weather
Steeped
The Wild Dead
 
Acknowledgements

Emerson suggests that genius is the activity that repairs the decay of things. Such genius is at work in Patakys debut,Overwinter. . . . [Its] a book that makes of the hearts affections a myriad world, where p