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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.
—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
I
The name Rinehart bangs no gongs
I’m neither too disturbed by my odd fate
The name’s John Doe. And I am a place
With the name John Doe I can remain the man
If pressed to name my brand of worldly thought
I’ve started to save the weeks’ headlines
My marriage to Lisette: never officially
The corporation, in its artificial skin
We are all in sales, vending our
And I will do this from that wide-slung
I can’t bear the airlessness of crossword
One doctor had me trace a path
When I lived in Kailua I heard
Today I read about the green sea slug
State officials say I abused the system
James Brown, by his own admission, was
I’m a man without a past, like so many folks
We have to tolerate inequality as a way
Is it just me or have tales of repression
Instead there’s this game called Word Bubble
Visionandpsychosis.net suggests my state
II
Here’s how you say John Doe in other
Thinking and speaking and feeling-in-knowing
I found the following entry in the Legal
Pale males will not have
Frankenstein’ Doc Creates Synth Life
According to my notes, I’ve read a lot
I want to be at all places at once and do
is the united states a christian nation
is the united states a nation-state
Today’s diagnosis: dissociative fugue
The Athena of myth is paradox
There’s no mesh to what I know
William Jennings Bryan would have
The public finally urged Bryan to ditch
Thomas Hardy. Joseph Stalin. Bertrand
Rev Up Your Recall Playing Wordsearch
The first known use of John Doe
When I was searching the Web
The largest landfill in the world
Today I am alone with half of me
I am no stander above men and women
Does a fifth taste bud lead us to seaweed
III
My name was Calvin J. Rinehart
For the Russian mnemonist simply
Scriabin had a face like a honey cake
A Petition to change the name of Miguel
I don’t know who I’m supposed to be
If you shave off his chardonnay filter
O but nevermind. All you fetus worshipers
Everyone Knows Someone Killed by
I thank my nurse for each kind turn
I was my mother’s mother, and her
Cal’s the one I used to call Myself
If memory is ruptured, one can go on
Across: 18. Not quite mega-
Schoenberg suggested we hear
To lag is to go slow. To stray is
The self is a thousand localities
Roxanne likes to call me Honey
Is it possible to let the sleeping life
A Petition to change the name of Jyotismita
This morning for the first time
Maybe nation-nature’s now a thing
Instead of choosing John Doe