
Crossing State Lines
Anne Babson(Author)
Unsolicited Press
Will be published approx. on 6. October 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
180 pages
978-1-969421-18-1 (ISBN)
Description
In Anne Babson's Crossing State Lines, the boundaries of time, geography, and political identity dissolve in a sweeping poetic odyssey through the American psyche. At its heart, the collection becomes a surreal time capsule, where the ghost of Walt Whitman and the very real figure of Liz Cheney navigate a nation teetering between its mythic past and its unstable, post-factual future.Moving from the zombie-walked commutes of Manhattan to the expansive, brutal beauty of Montana and Wyoming, Babson explores what it means to be American across centuries of contradiction. Whitman, the patient optimist, is resurrected into a modern landscape of TSA scanners, digital spectacle, political paranoia, and the looming scent of civil strife. Liz Cheney appears as a figure of muddy-booted resolve, fishing on Wyoming lakes and reflecting on the end of history while confronting a country divided by obvious lies and the long shadow of her own family legacy.Through a rich tapestry of forms, including ghazals, rondels, and gritty free verse, Babson weaves together the voices of immigrants at Ellis Island, exhausted Midtown office workers, historical figures like Phillis Wheatley, and citizens trying to locate themselves inside a fractured republic. Crossing State Lines is a defiant, lyrical meditation on honor, public truth, American inheritance, and the difficult commute between national mythology and lived reality.This is poetry for a country at the edge of itself, still asking whether language can carry us back toward one another.
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
213 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-969421-18-1 (9781969421181)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Anne Babson is the author of five full-length poetry collections: The White Trash Pantheon, winner of the Colby H. Kullman Award at the Southern Writers/Southern Writing Conference; Polite Occasions; Messiah; The Bunker Book; and Crossing State Lines. She has also published multiple chapbooks, and her individual poems have appeared in literary journals on five continents. Babson received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and holds a terminal degree in writing from The City College of New York, where she studied with Marilyn Hacker. She is the librettist of the opera Lotus Lives, composed by Su Lian Tan, and the author of the play Reenactment, published by Review Americana. She has taught at Southeastern Louisiana University since 2016.