The Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations

Incorporating memoir, folktales, fact, and hearsay into two distinctly moving poems, this collection attests to history’s manifestation in the present moment. Beginning in the author’s Indiana hometown, not far from the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, and along the Kentucky border where “looking from the free state / there is a river then a slave state,” Brenda Coultas uncovers a land still troubled by the specter of slavery. In the second section, Coultas investigates tales of UFO sightings, legendary monsters, and poltergeists, exploring the very nature of narrative truth through the lens of the ghost story.

Brenda Coultas is the author of A Handmade Museum, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award.