Human Directional

by Diane Raptosh

Pointing the way to what Montaigne called unlearning how to be a slave, Human Directional teaches us how to be free. With the deadly precision of the fey, it reveals the heartbreak and absurdity of our world by exploring—and often exploding—its most sacred memes. Diane Raptosh writes for lovers of poetry, books, words, mountains, and people who are worried about the world. Diane Raptosh 's American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press) was longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award and the 2014 Housatonic Book Award for Poetry. Recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, Raptosh was Boise's Poet Laureate (2013) and serves as Idaho's Writer-in-Residence (2013–2016).

88 pages, Paperback

Published October 11, 2016

About the author

Diane Raptosh's fourth book of poems, American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press, 2013), was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she is currently serving as the Boise Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho Writer in Residence (2013-2016). Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Women’s Studies Quarterly, Terrain.org, OccuPoetry, and the Los Angeles Review. Her work has also been anthologized widely in such places as New Poets of the American West, Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting, Classifieds: An Anthology of Prose Poems, and The Glenn Gould Anthology.

She holds the Eyck-Berringer Endowed Chair in English at The College of Idaho, where she teaches literature and creative writing as well as directs the program in criminal justice/prison studies. A highly active ambassador for poetry, she has conducted writing workshops, given readings, and lectured on poetry in a variety of locations ranging from university auditoriums to maximum security prisons, school buses to riverbanks. She lives with her family in Boise.

Reviews

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a student in a class taught by Raptosh many years ago, a class about writing prose poems, and I find these prose poems of hers to be some of her best work. They don't make the mistake some prose poem writers do of being too wordy and not very compact. As I went further and further into the book I found myself skimming over the traditional formed poems to get to the next prose poem. Good reading. I also re-read most of this book, especially the prose poems, in Aug of 2019.