Exuberance

“Intoxicated with the history of aviation, Dolores Hayden has written a work of historical imagination that is vocally energetic, psychologically acute, and musically sophisticated. In their love of physical risk and in their daredevil elan, the speakers in these poems keep faith with the mundane facts of flight as well as its spiritual intimations. The movement between lyrical speech and historical reflection gives us not only a portrait of the early years of the twentieth century, but a book in which technological advance is given a profoundly human voice.” —Tom Sleigh, author of House of Fact, House of Ruin

“Dolores Hayden performs her own high-flying act, presenting the interwoven monologues of seven stunt pilots (men and women) along with lyrics about flight at the dawn of U.S. aviation. With energetic language and inventive forms appropriate to her subject, she captures the risk and ‘exuberance’ of those who flew (and sometimes died) in pursuit of air records and aerial feats. She recreates a bygone era with striking imagery and tone. Her book is as interesting as it is pleasurable to read.” —Gardner McFall, author of On the Line, The Pilot’s Daughter, and Amelia

“Dolores Hayden’s poems beautifully capture the early decades of aviation in the United States, a time when many Americans responded with awe and amazement to the then-new technology. Hayden, though, explores below the public’s infatuation to give us a glimpse into the aviator’s dreams, both realized and broken; the carnival-show atmosphere of exhibition flying, with all the attendant ballyhoo; the impact of race and gender; and the often flawed and all-too-human heroes and heroines of the age. And in the final poem of the collection, she deftly connects the world of aviation enthusiasm to the world of flappers, bathtub gin, and stock speculation. A must read for pilots, aviation enthusiasts, and those who remember that Gatsby had an airplane.” —Janet Bednarek, author of Airports, Cities, and the Jet Age

“Exuberance is the word for this expansive and exciting collection, and also the word for the vanished earliest days of aviation it evokes, when flying was entertainment and adventure, not everyday transportation. Hayden brings to life a rollicking cast of birdmen and birdwomen, showmen and stunt pilots, producers and profiteers—and their entranced audiences and riders too. ‘I have the air intoxication,’ says Harriet Quimby, a journalist who was the first American woman to get a pilot’s license and the first woman pilot to fly the English Channel. ‘Only a flier knows what that means.’ Hayden’s lush and energetic poems give us earthbound readers, used to shuttling from airport to airport, a sense of what that intoxication must have felt like.” —Katha Pollitt, poet and columnist, author of The Mind-Body Problem

“Insightful, intriguing, full of wonder” —Maureen Corcoran of Breakwater Books, for Zip06

“With Exuberance, Dolores holds onto her knowledge of the American landscape as she spins a lyric story of fearless flyers, adoring crowds, empty fields, the built landscape as viewed from above, views into the world of clouds, and many lessons learned and shared.” —Pam Johnson, Senior Staff Writer at Zip06

Dolores Hayden, award-winning poet and historian of American landscapes, engages the lives of daredevil pilots—women and men from the earliest years of aviation—in Exuberance, her third poetry collection. Hayden’s poems have appeared in Poetry, the Common, Ecotone, Raritan, Shenandoah, the Yale Review, Southwest Review, Best American Poetry, and Poetry Daily. Author of American Yard (2004) and Nymph, Dun, and Spinner (2010), she’s received awards from the Poetry Society of America and the New England Poetry Club, and residencies in poetry from Djerassi, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Noepe. Professor of Architecture and American Studies Emerita at Yale University, Hayden has also been a Guggenheim fellow and won an American Library Association Notable Book Award for nonfiction.

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