Mary Quade

Mary Quade's "Local Extinctions" melds the ecological awareness of our destruction of nature through the example of the passenger pigeon with subtle social commentary and personal biography. She has the careful eye of a naturalist with a whimsical sense of comarision as she describes the mole:

Its tined fin-like forelegs
for diving, surfacing--land's
inconsiderable whale

And she looks at her own childhood without maudlin nostalgia but a gratitude for its "Small Hurts" as she gives homage to the rough playground of her youth in comparison with the too-safe plastic and rubber mulched present:

You allowed us all
to break our bones, to see beneath our blank
skin--
persecuted knees, ephemeral teeth, the sanguine world
of gravity..."

There is something of Maxine Kumin in Quade's work and something all her own."Local Extinctions" is a joy to read even as it squarely faces the mortality of the individual and the species.… (mehr)