American Amnesiac

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Review Straddling confession and prophesy, history and myth, intimacy and anonymity, American Amnesiac offers a riveting meditation on a distinctly American condition.—Edvige Giunta,author of Writing with an Accent:Contemporary Italian American Women AuthorsAmerican Amnesiac is Everyman from the inside out, a truly remarkable work. It records the mental processes of a man suffering from amnesia as flashes of the past impinge on the only world he knows—the now. Its language moves with the speed of thought: rational, irrational, dynamic, but always convincing. It’s a jolting read.—Richard Shelton,author of The Last Person to Hear Your VoiceAgainst the background of our cultural forgetting, the shortcomings of America’s working memory, Diane Raptosh introduces us to this soul who might be any of us as he pieces together a world and a self from bewilderment. Haunting and precise, acrobatic and intimate, Raptosh has forged a space in which we meet this John Doe and for a time leave off our collective loneliness. And for that I’m grateful.—Kerri Webster,author of Grand & Arsenal, winner of the 2012 Iowa Prizewinner in 2011 of the Whiting Writers’ Award in PoetryAmerican Amnesiac is a linguistic trance, a spell of sorts cast by a fine poet whose work compels and rewards slow reading. — Fred GardapheStraddling confession and prophesy, history and myth, intimacy and anonymity, American Amnesiac offers a riveting meditation on a distinctly American condition. ―Edvige Giunta,author of Writing with an Accent:Contemporary Italian American Women AuthorsAmerican Amnesiac is Everyman from the inside out, a truly remarkable work. It records the mental processes of a man suffering from amnesia as flashes of the past impinge on the only world he knows―the now. Its language moves with the speed of thought: rational, irrational, dynamic, but always convincing. It’s a jolting read.―Richard Shelton,author of The Last Person to Hear Your VoiceAgainst the background of our cultural forgetting, the shortcomings of America’s working memory, Diane Raptosh introduces us to this soul who might be any of us as he pieces together a world and a self from bewilderment. Haunting and precise, acrobatic and intimate, Raptosh has forged a space in which we meet this John Doe and for a time leave off our collective loneliness. And for that I’m grateful.―Kerri Webster,author of Grand & Arsenal, winner of the 2012 Iowa Prizewinner in 2011 of the Whiting Writers’ Award in PoetryAmerican Amnesiac is a linguistic trance, a spell of sorts cast by a fine poet whose work compels and rewards slow reading. ― Fred Gardaphe Read more About the Author Diane Raptosh’s fourth book of poetry, American Amnesiac, (Etruscan Press) was longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award and was a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she served as the Boise Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016), the highest literary honor in the state. In 2018 she received the Idaho Governor’s Arts Award in Excellence. A highly active ambassador for poetry, she has given poetry workshops everywhere from riverbanks to maximum security prisons. She teaches creative writing and runs the program in Criminal Justice/Prison Studies at The College of Idaho. Her most recent collection of poems, Human Directional, was released by Etruscan Press in 2016. Read more