We Are Not Where We Are

by Donovan, Matt; George, Jenny

• ISBN13: 9781949344592
• ISBN10: 1949344592
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-06-10
• Publisher: Bull City Press

Summary

Since its publication in 1854, Henry David Thoreau’ s Walden has ensnared the American imagination. In We Are Not Where We Are, poets Matt Donovan and Jenny George perform a chapter-by-chapter erasure of Walden, challenging its deeply flawed beliefs about individualism, the natural world, and relationships between people and the land. The resultant poems embody Donovan and George’ s collaborative spirit, unearthing in Thoreau’ s text a pluralistic vision of limitless possibility and wild beauty.

Author Biography

Matt Donovan is the author of four books and two chapbooks, including, most recently, The Dug-Up Gun Museum (BOA) and Missing Department (Visual Studies Workshop), a collection of poetry and art made in collaboration with the artist Ligia Bouton. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Creative Capital Grant, a Pushcart Prize, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature. Donovan serves as Director of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. Jenny George is the author of The Dream of Reason and After Image, both from Copper Canyon Press, as well as the chapbook * (Bull City Press). She has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Lannan Foundation, MacDowell, and Yaddo. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, the New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she works in social justice philanthropy.