Two Faint Lines in the Violet

Poetry. In TWO FAINT LINES IN THE VIOLET, praised by Annie Finch as "ahead of its time, a tragic and lucid banner leading us into the 21st century when poets will increasingly be called on to remind us that we are human animals whose fate is held in the earth," Lissa Kiernan explores poetry's unique ability to document yet revision the nuclear age, how when singing somewhere between the personal and political—if we listen closely—we might hear the social. Fueled by her investigation into Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Plant, the etiology of her father's brain tumor, and her experiences coming of age in New York City, she laments and fêtes the abundance of lessons learned, ultimately tuning in to "the electricity of life" (Amy King), where personal and industrial meltdowns converse and converge. Confessionalism tempered by omission, experimentation in diction, and the restraint of set form are brushed into landscapes spanning the iconic to the deceptively bucolic—lush, yet toxic, watersheds to concrete jungles.