Kirjahaku

100 MILES OF HEAT, a new chapbook by Mark B. Hamilton, explores the relationship between people and the contemporary environment. Praised by scholars, writers and editors, these poems beautifully express a journey down the historic Ohio River. The poems have been recognized in contests and by publication in such journals as New Letters, We Proceeded On, The Listening Eye, Ship of Fools, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Written River. This chapbook is a sampling from his book-length manuscript "OYO," a semi-finalist for the Washington Prize, 2015. Comments on "OYO" include: "... written beautifully ... a wonderful adventure." --David Remnick, editor, The New Yorker "...remarkably told in trenchant verse ... a wail and a love-song .... --Robert Michael Pyle, PhD, environmentalist and author "You have added a major text to American environmental literature." --Darlene Mathis-Eddy, PhD, Professor Emeritus, BSU

OYO, The Beautiful River is environmental literature, a book-length sequence of lyric narratives written from a journey down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Cairo, Illinois, in a fifteen-foot rowing dory. It explores the vulnerability of identity and relationships within this oftentimes polluted and quickly changing place we call home, our nation, this world. A theme of reciprocity develops between self and river, between the human and the elemental, and honors the First Nations with a belief that justice and compassion are the appropriate and inevitable outcomes to the respect we give to the Earth.