{"product_id":"9780692423615","title":"Walpack and Such--Poetry: New and Selected: by Kerri Nicole McCaffrey","description":"Join Kerri Nicole McCaffrey on a deeply spiritual poetic flight over a long forgotten land--and in your gliding be transported by the sound of steep waterfalls and a balsam breeze. While there, why not go to a beautiful place in yourself that perhaps, like the town of Walpack, has been too long forgotten?\u003cp\u003eThe title of the book refers to both Walpack Township-and Walpack Center, New Jersey. This bucolic spot was slated to be flooded by the Federal Government's Tocks Island Dam Project-an idea which flourished from the 1960's through the early 1970's. The project would have inundated parts of Northwest New Jersey and Northeast Pennsylvania via the damming of the Delaware River. The government promised that the reservoir and dam would provide flood protection downstream, clean drinking water, and a recreation area. Residents, people who loved the area, and environmentalists all fought back hard and eventually stopped the project from coming to fruition. By that time, however, the Federal Government had made the majority of area residents move, buying their homes in an \"eminent domain\" style. The Walpack was essentially abandoned. As if it had been the Rapture, barn doors stood rolled open, personal effects blew in the wind, and an eerie but peaceful trance enveloped the area. You can hike there today-as Kerri Nicole McCaffrey has done since her childhood. These poems are Kerri Nicole's testament to the Walpack, a place effuse with natural beauty: waterfalls, cliffs, and pine stands. The haunting parts however, the pieces that possess a poet's soul, are the abandoned structures-like unfinished words spoken by the dying-we can only speculate as to what their former inhabitants might have said. Kerri Nicole sees this volume of poems as her guess.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNoted Dodge Poet BJ Ward has compared Kerri Nicole McCaffrey to Thoreau and Mary Oliver--high praise indeed. Her poetry is both conversational and songful. You will want to buy all of her books after reading just this one. Follow Kerri on her Amazon Author page and at her poetry blog:\u003cbr\u003ewww.thepoetseyes.com.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA Poem of Introduction to This Collection\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In This Valley\"\u003cbr\u003e-Concerning the last day in Walpack, New Jersey-\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this valley,\u003cbr\u003eWith its smattering of blossoms\u003cbr\u003eMountain laurel, apple, pear-\u003cbr\u003eWe walk in golden grass\u003cbr\u003eTo the stately oak\u003cbr\u003eWhich was a part \u003cbr\u003eOf both then and now\u003cbr\u003eAnd sitting in its generous arms\u003cbr\u003eWonder\u003cbr\u003eWhat happened to the farm\u003cbr\u003eWhere's the teacher\u003cbr\u003eThe mailman\u003cbr\u003eWhere has everyone gone?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo which there are various answers-\u003cbr\u003eA scattering of clues:\u003cbr\u003eAbandoned homes, pink wallpaper peeling-\u003cbr\u003eA glass bottle of laundry bluing-\u003cbr\u003eBut from behind the veil of closed eyes\u003cbr\u003eAll the information we need-\u003cbr\u003eOn that last day, \u003cbr\u003eA farmer got off his plow\u003cbr\u003eAnd shed a tear at this tree\u003cbr\u003eThe schoolmaster knew it was perhaps the last bell\u003cbr\u003eAnd rang it pensively,\u003cbr\u003eAs the mailman shut the boxes\u003cbr\u003eSlowly. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll saw the farmer, standing by the oak\u003cbr\u003eOne hand on its bark,\u003cbr\u003eAs if leaning on a friend-\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA sight, somehow, holy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"kerri\\mccaffrey","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47095774871792,"sku":"9780692423615","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780692423615_p0.jpg?v=1763619259","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780692423615","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}