In Parachutes Descending

Poems

Tana Jean Welch’s In Parachutes Descending is a palimpsest oscillating between lovers and coastlines, backlit by the tragic absurdities of the Anthropocene. These poems are a ship’s log of geographical losses and ecstasies, an erotic map of floating cities orbited by flesh-eating mermaids, soiled grand pianos, and every form of bare infinitive.

Simeon Berry, author of Monograph

In Parachutes Descending follows the speaker’s decision to leave her Bostonian husband for Jane, a San Franciscan artist, while charting the sensual consequences of our bodily entanglements. These poems capture personal desires fermenting among current earthly cataclysms, including climate change and global capitalism. In doing so, this collection asks us to think inclusively about the ways we become with all humans and nonhumans, all of us—past, present, and future—intimately entwined with others.

More Praise

In her second collection, In Parachutes Descending, Tana Jean Welch deftly moves through the climate crisis and human connection. Her rich language, a sexuality turned inward, closes the distance between civilization and its ecology. This collection will brighten your mind and sharpen the space between the individual and the infinite.

Avni Vyas, author of Little God

In a world that treats bodies too often as commodities, Tana Jean Welch offers a counter perspective that insists on the interconnectedness of all living—and nonliving—beings. Through precise, image-centered language, In Parachutes Descending is that rare poetry book that offers not only a critique but a vision, too.

Charlotte Pence, author of Code

The poems of Tana Jean Welch’s In Parachutes Descending float between fact and possibility, destruction and passion, introspection and challenge, between the bodies we create together—lovingly, disastrously, rupturingly, rapturously—and the bodies we dwell in alone.

Lauren Russell, author of Descent

Table of Contents

Sample

72 Pages, 6 x 9 in.

January, 2024

isbn : 9780822967200

Series

Pitt Poetry Series

Subjects

Poetry / General

about the author

Tana Jean Welch is the author of Latest Volcano, winner of the 2015 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared in the New York Times, the Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, the Colorado Review, and other national literary journals. Born and raised in Fresno, California, she currently lives in Tallahassee where she is associate professor of medical humanities at the Florida State University College of Medicine.

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