The Burning World

By Robert Gibb and Cleo Qian

Homestead, Pa.: "The Former Steel Capital of the World." In this elegant and arresting book of poems, Robert Gibb deftly renders a world of molten steel and red-hot ingots, of lives lived according to the factory whistle, and of a grandfather who "plunged / Like an angel, his body broken / And on fire." Passing through fire, this book makes plain, is one of the necessary conditions of witness.

These lyrical and devastatingly beautiful poems are powerful in both their ability to evoke the past and in the poignancy of the losses they catalog, beginning with heartbreaking personal losses and extending into communal ones. Indeed, a book so freighted with loss and sadness might have deteriorated into maudlin nostalgia in lesser hands. But Gibb has elevated The Burning World to the level of tragedy, with all the dignity and severity that that word calls forth.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1557287651
• ISBN13: 9781557287656
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Length: 76 Pages
• Weight: 0.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 4.1" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A personal account of loss both personal and communal

I am a long time fan of Philip Levine. He is among a select pew preeminent chroniclers of the lives of working class people and has managed to faithfully record their experiences in a clear, true and genuine manner. With this volume Robert Gibb has joined Levine in this select group. Gibb was born and raised in the steel mill town of Homestead, PA, the kind of town that used up grandfathers, fathers, and sons, indeed entire families, in the hearths of blast furnaces and tap rooms. It also produced this highly personal account of loss both personal and communal. These poems portray loss and sadness in a tender, passionate manner that renders a dignity to those that labored to preserve the things we all hope to save. You will not forget this one.