{"product_id":"9780615911274","title":"Artesian Well","description":"\u003cp\u003eWith tenderness and clarity, C. Malcolm Ellsworth documents what lies above and below the surface. Using the Midwestern landscape, she fearlessly navigates a topography of love, violence, regret, and forgiveness - and unearths whatever it is that seeks to be revealed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn life, we live with what has passed. In art, we make the past the present. We make it a gift. In \u003cem\u003eArtesian Well\u003c\/em\u003e, C. Malcolm Ellsworth presents us with love, lost love, regret, hope and strength. Farm girls write \"on rocks \/ with rocks,\" write on \"wood \/ with ashes.\" Like the poet, they use the material to make the material. In \"Chocolate Cake,\" Ellsworth bakes up a domestic \"sheet.\" By the end, the poem, like the cake, \"splits, just a little \/ in the middle, and feels springy like flesh, \/ and a toothpick stuck in the center \/ comes out clean.\" These artful poems, fleshed with the particulars of ordinary life, come out clean. - Thomas Fox Averill, author of \u003cem\u003erode\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eSecrets of the Tsil Cafe\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe poems in \u003cem\u003eArtesian Well\u003c\/em\u003e wander with a dark elegance through a grainy rural terrain, where the burden of memory and a collective grief are characteristics of Midwestern legacy. This is a place where girls shoot guns and ride horses bareback, where recipes are passed down for generations, where \"Sometimes in winter \/ they throw the dead away.\" Ellsworth reveals with subtlety the ways our memories can play tricks on us and the illusion of a comforting nostalgia. This is a book about family and the bonds between sisters and mothers and daughters, about forgiveness and aging, about how to learn that \"the only way home \/ is through each other.\" - Mary Stone Dockery, author of \u003cem\u003eOne Last Cigarette\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEllsworth's \u003cem\u003eArtesian Well\u003c\/em\u003e reveals the dirt, both emotional and physical, of country living - the volatile, abusive husbands; the killers; the preachers. But here also is a book of beauty - of horses, of maidenhood, of desire blossoming like a chrysanthemum. Full of vivid insider details and stark images, this is a collection you won't want to put down. - Kevin Rabas, author of \u003cem\u003eSonny Kenner's Red Guitar\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ELJ Publications","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49872930832624,"sku":"9780615911274","price":9.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780615911274_p0.jpg?v=1784236818","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780615911274","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}