Just released!
SEEING
THROUGH
THE
SMOKE
Visions of a Possible Apocalypse
If artists are the antennae of their generation, as poet Ezra Pound proclaimed, picking up on prescient signals of discontent and danger ignored by the mainstream, it is artists and poets who are among the first to smell smoke, to read the writing on the wall when change and disruption lie ahead. In this tradition, Carol Flake Chapman, who first began writing poems to deal with her grief in losing her husband, began to write about her larger sense of loss as natural disasters were becoming the new normal, from fire and flood to drought and storms. There was seemingly “nowhere to run,” no escape from the consequences of the increasing disconnection of humans from the natural world, as she writes in one of the poems in this collection. But in her work, there are always glimmers of hope and possibility to explore and new and deeper connections to be forged, so that we may all see through the smoke to a clear path ahead.
Carol Flake Chapman
Healing the World With Words
About the Author
Carol Flake Chapman
After a stint in academia, Carol Flake Chapman turned to journalism, working as writer and editor for a number of leading newspapers and magazines. She was a founding editor of Vanity Fair; she was the horse racing correspondent for The New Yorker; she was a rock critic for the Village Voice; she was the Texas stringer for U.S. News & World Report; and she served as an editor and columnist for the Boston Globe. She has written as well for Harper’s, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Vogue, Conde Nast Traveler, Connoisseur, The Nation, Texas Monthly, and The New Republic. She has covered subjects from religion, culture, and politics to travel and nature. Her pioneering book on evangelicalism and the rise of the religious right, titled Redemptorama: Culture, Politics and the New Evangelicalism, has become a classic, and her book about the city of New Orleans, titled New Orleans: Behind the Masks of America’s Most Exotic City, has been cited by many as one of the best books ever written about the city.