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ISBN 978-0-9984580-3-8 FORMAT: 5.5 X 8.5 inches; Perfect Bound 36 pgs
By Linda Lerner and Donna Joy Kerness
Between 1692—93 twenty people were accused of being witches and executed in Salem Massachusetts. Nineteen were hanged on Gallows Hill, and one elderly man was pressed to death by heavy stones after he wouldn’t enter a plea. Several others died in jail.
My purpose in this collection is not to retell what happened, which is widely known, or to give an account of Arthur Miller’s powerful, play, The Crucible. Instead, I’ve chosen to use his technique and blend characters together with people we know living among us.
What is going on now in this country makes it especially poignant for me, but to restrict it to that, is also too limiting. I see the situation as something ongoing, barely noticeable, until an accumulation of incidents makes it impossible to ignore, its darkness sweeps down on us, and we have no choice but to rise up and confront it.
400 years is next door, across the street, the place where you live and work; it is the distance between one neighbor and another. The village was called Salem then. Its villagers walk among us; they act like us. We do not recognize them. We prefer not to. — from Linda Lerner's introduction
Watch Linda read from this book here. -
This is the last print edition for this anthology. I'm getting old and confused and I need to take a break from publishing for a while. Haven't decided whether or not I'll come back to it (I do enjoy putting out a good book - it's just all the other B.S. that goes with each project). In any case, this last issue has over one hundred poets in it; nearly twenty artists featured; an interview with Basia Miller, a poet from Santa Fe, NM who's had a very interesting life; the winners of the Angela Consolo Mankiewicz Poetry Contest (Canadian John B. Lee, Americans Elaine Mintzer and Alexis Fancher); rounded out with essays and stories, including an essay on poet Tony Moffiet by John Macker. If you enjoy poetry, Lummox 9 gives you a wide perspective of the state of the art, here in the small press. I believe there's something for everyone. View on Issuu https://issuu.com/poetraindog/docs/lummox9e-book