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A Visit to Civilization (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)

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Sandra McPherson’s A Visit to Civilization includes several different types of poems, the most striking of which are those that have been inspired by fragments of the past. McPherson calls these fragments “extinct objects,” and they include a toy soldier, a Haitian spirit flag, a penny postcard from 1911, the unpublished diary of a nineteenth century fisherman who lived in Pennsylvania, a pair of boots once owned by cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, telegrams sent to (and apparently unanswered by) a stage actress during the 1920’s, and a Mennonite quilt. From...

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