"Unsettling the stories of thirty-two historic Marys, the poems in Mary’s Dust startlingly reconfigure what we thought we knew about confinement and loss, liberation and love. With their variety of inventive and traditional forms, these poems offer testament to the strength of women creating their own narratives.

This book includes a digital download featuring commissioned music by cellist Lori Goldston. Her response, Cello Songs for Mary’s Dust premiered at the Chapel Performance Space on February 23, 2017. Our recording is from that evening. The download (available via password received with each book order) also includes Ms. Mueller reading over thirty minutes of selections from the book."

ANNUNCIATION

The air before her congealed

and became the angel, blazing.

Its robes streamed and whirled

in a wind that filled her ears.

Through its transparent form

she could see the brown hills

and stunted trees beyond, magnified

and trembling like flames.

She could not have told

what was said. That story was

conceived years later, by men

who had not been there.

Afterwards the stirred dust

settled round her feet with a faint

ringing, as if it were the dust

of a thousand bells.

". . . This is the poem as survival thriller, impossible to put down."—Booklist

"Blending historical, scientific, and literary scholarship with an impressive range of poetic forms, Melinda Mueller masterfully brings us the legendary tale of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic Expedition. What the Ice Gets is an adventure story, a requiem, and a love poem written to twenty-eight heroes and the mythic landscape they set out to explore but that instead explored them."

What the Ice Gets received the Washington State Book Award in 2001.

"More than how you look, 'tis what

you see that changes most.

The first time I saw trees again,

they looked to me like green ghosts."