American Amnesiac

Following the manic journey of a man stripped of memory, the poems in American Amnesiac confront the complexities of being American in an age of corruption, corporations, and global conflict.

I am a man missing a nation and a wife, strung up between a past
I may not want and a present in which I cannot make myself at ease.

Diane Raptosh has published three books of poems. The recipient of three literature fellowships from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she teaches creative writing and literature at The College of Idaho. She was named Boise's first ever Poet Laureate in 2013.

Short-listed for National Book Awards (Poetry) 2013

“Straddling confession and prophesy, history and myth, intimacy and anonymity, American Amnesiac offers a riveting meditation on a distinctly American condition. --Edvige Giunta, author of Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors American Amnesiac is Everyman from the inside out, a truly remarkable work. It records the mental processes of a man suffering from amnesia as flashes of the past impinge on the only world he knows--the now. Its language moves with the speed of thought: rational, irrational, dynamic, but always convincing. It's a jolting read. --Richard Shelton, author of The Last Person to Hear Your Voice Against the background of our cultural forgetting, the shortcomings of America's working memory, Diane Raptosh introduces us to this soul who might be any of us as he pieces together a world and a self from bewilderment. Haunting and precise, acrobatic and intimate, Raptosh has forged a space in which we meet this John Doe and for a time leave off our collective loneliness. And for that I'm grateful. --Kerri Webster, author of Grand & Arsenal, winner of the 2012 Iowa Prize winner in 2011 of the Whiting Writers' Award in Poetry American Amnesiac is a linguistic trance, a spell of sorts cast by a fine poet whose work compels and rewards slow reading. -- Fred Gardaphe”

Straddling confession and prophesy, history and myth, intimacy and anonymity, American Amnesiac offers a riveting meditation on a distinctly American condition.
--Edvige Giunta,
author of Writing with an Accent:
Contemporary Italian American Women Authors

American Amnesiac is Everyman from the inside out, a truly remarkable work. It records the mental processes of a man suffering from amnesia as flashes of the past impinge on the only world he knows--the now. Its language moves with the speed of thought: rational, irrational, dynamic, but always convincing. It's a jolting read.
--Richard Shelton,
author of The Last Person to Hear Your Voice

Against the background of our cultural forgetting, the shortcomings of America's working memory, Diane Raptosh introduces us to this soul who might be any of us as he pieces together a world and a self from bewilderment. Haunting and precise, acrobatic and intimate, Raptosh has forged a space in which we meet this John Doe and for a time leave off our collective loneliness. And for that I'm grateful.
--Kerri Webster,
author of Grand & Arsenal, winner of the 2012 Iowa Prize
winner in 2011 of the Whiting Writers' Award in Poetry

American Amnesiac is a linguistic trance, a spell of sorts cast by a fine poet whose work compels and rewards slow reading. -- Fred Gardaphe

Diane Raptosh has published three books of poems: "Just West of Now"(Guernica Editions, 1992), "Labor Songs" (Guernica, 1999), and "Parents from a Different Alphabet" (Guernica, 2008). The recipient of three Literature Fellowships from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she teaches creative writing and literature at The College of Idaho. She lives in Boise with her family.

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