Borderline Fortune
Penguin Poets
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Narrated by:
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Teresa K. Miller
About this listen
A collection that explores inherited trauma on an individual and communal level, from a National Poetry Series-winning poet who “refus[es] the mind’s limits” (Carol Muske-Dukes).
Borderline Fortune is a meditation on intangible family inheritance - of unresolved intergenerational conflicts and traumas in particular - set against the backdrop of our planetary inheritance as humans. As species go extinct and glaciers melt, Teresa K. Miller asks what we owe one another and what it means to echo one’s ancestors’ grief and fear. Drawing on her family history, from her great-grandfather’s experience as a schoolteacher on an island in the Bering Strait to her father’s untimely death, as well as her pursuit of regenerative horticulture, Miller seeks through these beautifully crafted poems to awaken from the intergenerational trance and bear witness to our current moment with clarity and attention.
©2021 Teresa K. Miller (P)2021 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Miller will be a new and invigorating voice, fully conversant with the ambiguities of our present day.” —Library Journal
“I’m so impressed with this new book, with the condensation of syntax, the music, the interior rhyme and off-rhyme, echoey sequences, and the ethical and aesthetic insistence on a lack of resolution. I’m fascinated by the way the ‘you’ to whom so many of the poems are directed begins to take on aspects of a landscape. In fact, all through the book, the nonhuman and the human seem to be merging. W. S. Merwin implied that elegy is always written for someone who can’t read it, but Miller’s poems suggest that elegy is a modality that can conjure presence again and that the poem resurrects the dead in some sense.” —Forrest Gander, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, on Borderline Fortune at the Montana Book Festival
“Teresa K. Miller explores startling territories in Borderline Fortune. She addresses the lines we’ve drawn and erased for centuries on the earth—that conform to the borders we cross and uncross in the mind. Yet: ‘I’m asking you to believe in what you’ve never seen or heard,’ she writes, refusing the mind’s limits. Here is the dark power of climate change where she finds ‘the future all danger, heat, & scarcity.’ Blake, Dickinson, and Hopkins’ Terrible Sonnets hover (‘birds build—but not I build’), above trees cut down and hope with feathers. The damage done to the earth echoes the damages to the protean mind of the poet—but Miller remains radiantly elusive, an escape artist in these marvelous poems of altered terra firma and revelation.” —Carol Muske-Dukes, author of Blue Rose
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Story
Professor Vellitt Boe teaches at the prestigious Ulthar Women's College. When one of her most gifted students elopes with a dreamer from the waking world, Vellitt must retrieve her.
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it took me a few trys to ger through this audio
- By Melanie on 05-13-17
By: Kij Johnson
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Darwinia
- By: Robert Charles Wilson
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1912, history was changed by the Miracle, when the old world of Europe was replaced by Darwinia, a strange land of nightmarish jungle and antediluvian monsters. To some, the Miracle was an act of divine retribution; to others, it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire. Leaving an America now ruled by religious fundamentalists, young Guilford Law travels to Darwinia on a mission of discovery that will take him further than he can possibly imagine.
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Not much about Darwinia.
- By Clavaine on 10-02-09
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The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun
- A Mayan Tale of Ecstasy, Time, and Finding One's True Form
- By: Martín Prechtel
- Narrated by: Martín Prechtel
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Martín Prechtel revives a hitherto unknown Guatemalan Tzutujil Mayan tale of the beginnings of the world with a poetic retelling of the story. Prechtel authoritatively retells the powerful tale of the Tall Girl who weaves the world in a loom, her parents the Sun and the Moon who repudiate her suitors, and the mysterious man who disguises himself as a hummingbird to lure her away.
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A magnificent story of many meanings
- By Amazon Customer on 11-08-22
By: Martín Prechtel
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RipRap and Cold Mountain Poems
- By: Gary Snyder
- Narrated by: Gary Snyder
- Length: 58 mins
- Unabridged
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By any measure, Gary Snyder is one of the greatest poets in America in the last century. From his first book of poems to his latest collection of essays, his work and his example, standing between Tu Fu and Thoreau, has been influential all over the world. Riprap, his first book of poems, was published in Japan in 1959 by Origin Press, and it is the 50th anniversary of that groundbreaking book that is celebrated with this new edition.
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Listen to for 1000 nights and never long enough
- By Susie on 05-05-16
By: Gary Snyder
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Poemcrazy
- Freeing Your Life with Words
- By: Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge
- Narrated by: Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Following the success of several recent inspirational and practical books for would-be writers, Poemcrazy is a perfect guide for everyone who ever wanted to write a poem but was afraid to try. Writing workshop leader Susan Wooldridge shows how to think, use one's senses, and practice exercises that will make poems more likely to happen.
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Her Words, Her Voice...
- By S. Schultz on 11-21-14
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Spoon River Anthology
- By: Edgar Lee Masters
- Narrated by: Patrick Fraley, Edward Asner
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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From a cemetery in a mythical small town in Illinois, the dead speak about their lives. Each free-verse monologue stands as an epitaph for the person speaking, yet the play is ultimately about life, not death. Featuring 50 performers with specially commissioned original music, this is the only audio version of this landmark classic available.
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Magnificent American poetry
- By Admiral Pike on 04-14-05
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The Summer Book
- By: Tove Jansson, Thomas Teal - translator
- Narrated by: Natasha Soudek
- Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Summer Book Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer - its sunlight and storms - into 22 crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia's grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. The grandmother is unsentimental and wise, if a little cranky; Sophia is impetuous and volatile, but she tends to her grandmother with the care of a new parent.
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GORGEOUS. FULL OF GRACE. NEEDED THIS.
- By Annie Armstrong on 04-14-22
By: Tove Jansson, and others
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The Lightkeeper's Daughters
- A Novel
- By: Jean E. Pendziwol
- Narrated by: Dara Rosenberg, Dawn Harvey, Tom Parks
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Though her mind is still sharp, Elizabeth's eyes have failed. No longer able to linger over her beloved books or gaze at the paintings that move her spirit, she fills the void with music and memories of her family, especially her beloved twin sister, Emily. When her late father's journals are discovered after an accident, the past suddenly becomes all too present. With the help of Morgan, a delinquent teenager performing community service at her senior home, Elizabeth goes through the diaries.
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very good
- By Jason Burger on 09-17-17
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Ka
- Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr
- By: John Crowley
- Narrated by: John Crowley
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Dar Oakley - the first Crow in all of history with a name of his own - was born two thousand years ago. When a man learns his language, Dar finally gets the chance to tell his story. He begins his tale as a young man, and how he went down to the human underworld and got hold of the immortality meant for humans, long before Julius Caesar came into the Celtic lands; how he sailed West to America with the Irish monks searching for the Paradise of the Saints; and how he continuously went down into the land of the dead and returned.
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Amazing book
- By Franklin on 04-17-18
By: John Crowley
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On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
- By: Henry David Thoreau
- Narrated by: Jim Killavey
- Length: 1 hr and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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This essay by Thoreau first published in 1849, argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule their consciences. It goes on to say that individuals have a duty to avoid allowing the government to make them the agents of injustice. The quote: "That government is best which governs least," sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, actually was first found in this essay. Thoreaus' thoughts were motivated by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War but they are still relevant and resonate today.
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10:22 p.m., 10th of January, 2018
- By Anonymous User on 01-11-18
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Far North
- A Novel
- By: Marcel Theroux
- Narrated by: Yelena Schmulenson
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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My father had an expression for a thing that turned out bad. He'd say it had gone west. But going west always sounded pretty good to me. After all, westwards is the path of the sun. And through as much history as I know of, people have moved west to settle and find freedom. But our world had gone north, truly gone north, and just how far north I was beginning to learn.
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Spellbinding!
- By Joan on 01-14-10
By: Marcel Theroux