Description:
1803: The Wintering offers a unique perspective melding a People's History of the Lewis and Clark experience with contemporary environmental sensibilities. These traditional verse poems, circa 1800, explore Captain William Clark's journal entries while at Camp Dubois. This well-founded book of history-based poetry provokes with a mix of romantic notions, fixed forms, and the personal layers beneath those historical documents. The poet becomes a literary sleuth, social anthropologist, and translator of the elusive.
Brief description: Mark B. Hamilton has worked as a Shipwright, Carpenter, Professor of English, Graduate Faculty Member, Caseworker for children and youth services, and Editor of environmental magazines. His publications include 3 poetry volumes, 3 poetry chapbooks, and 120 individual poems, plus researched essays, with inclusion into the Folk Life Archives, US Library of Congress. 1803: The Wintering was awarded First Honorable Mention for the 2024 Donna Wolf-Palacio Poetry Prize.
Review Quotes:
I'm right there-present-in place wherever the poem takes me as the poet moves with beautifully skillful and lyrically mystical language in metaphors that reveal, throughout, the inner pilgrimage of the narrator. Without reference to scholarly, academic, erudite, or esoteric elements, the artist connects by simply being there, having done the physical work, expressing beyond a mere reconstituted reenactment of the Lewis and Clark journals. Thank you, for these poems, a joy and a delight to read. I am glad for this book. I love these poems that affectionately and artfully call me to attention.
-Margaret Dimoplon, author, Professor Emerita, Ball State University
Thank you for these poems. "Shelter" shows an amazing situation and sensory picture.
-Jean Mellichamp Milliken, Editor, The Lyric