Inventing the Americas by William Heath

$17.99

 

For William Heath the islands and continents of what the Europeans were pleased to call the New World were not so much “discovered” by Christopher Colón as invented.  “The world in his head,” as Heath writes of Colón, “is not the one under his feet.”  Off the coast of Venezuela Colón sees the Orinoco splitting into four branches like the rivers of the Terrestrial Paradise and writes to Queen Isabella “I have just found the Garden of Eden.”  It is a paradise laid open to despoliation and rape.  Heath tells the story of the misapprehensions, misnamings and crimes of Colón and his companions in their conquest of this immense land with a poet’s eye, finding just the right moment, the right detail to distil this long tale of exploitation, enslavement and death in thirteen brief poems.  In the end Colón, the man ennobled as The Admiral of the Ocean Sea dies impoverished and the explorer and fabulist Vespucci gives his name to the lands Colón first reached, and in a sly reference to our own day

…America it remains, a land

where fact and fantasy merge,

and true histories are trumped

by pleasing myths.

 –Zeese Papanikolas, author of Savages

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: ,

Description

Inventing the Americas

by William Heath

Paper

$15.99  List: $17.99

979-8-88838-726-9

2024

Pre-order Price Guarantee until July 26, 2024

RESERVE YOUR COPY TODAY

This title will be released on September 20, 2024

The thirteen poem sequence of Inventing the Americas depicts the true yet fabulous tale of how Christóbal Colón and Americus Vespucci explored the Western Hemisphere and why the continents were named for the latter not the former.  Based on years of research and teaching, William Heath captures with poetic precision and telling detail what actually happened, even though some events are almost beyond belief.  These voyages, bringing in their wake horrific consequences for indigenous peoples, profoundly changed the world.

William Heath has published three poetry books: The Walking Man, Steel Valley Elegy, and Going Places; two chapbooks, Night Moves in Ohio and Inventing the Americas; three novels: The Children Bob Moses Led (winner of the Hackney Award), Devil Dancer, and Blacksnake’s Path; a work of history, William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest (winner of two Spur Awards and the Oliver Hazard Perry Award); and a collection of interviews, Conversations with Robert Stone.  He lives in Annapolis. www.williamheathbooks.com

Reviews

There are no reviews yet.

Be the first to review “Inventing the Americas by William Heath”

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related products