240 pages
2014 Nebraska Book Award
The Untidy Season: An Anthology of Nebraska Women Poets takes its readers through the lush alphabet of Nebraska poetry—from Adkins to Zumpfe—with selections of poetry by nearly 90 native-born or transplanted Nebraska writers who write and live fearlessly and with great skill. Their topics range from the beginnings of life to the end—family relationships, loss, misunderstandings, work, trust, betrayal, love and hate, bereavement. Through those lives—because of them—these poems emerged, an indelible record of the triumph of the human spirit.
The four editors of The Untidy Season, each an accomplished poet in her own right, searched for poems of clarity, honesty, passion, and brilliance. One of the editors wrote: “We were drawn to work that both celebrated and subverted the ‘typical’ Nebraska experience, the ‘typical’ experience of motherhood, the ‘typical’ experience of womanhood. I suppose my own aesthetic leads me to be drawn to work that challenges ‘typical,’ but much of the work we experienced over that year of reading submissions forced me to engage with my own stereotypes and see inside them.”
You will agree they found what they looked for when you read these marvelously bracing, gritty, and wise poems.