To help you grasp its structure, we will first focus on the "Batteries" poems--a nine-poem sequence that won an award and was published by itself in a chapbook before Disclamor was published.
"The Batteries" are nine military installations on the California Coast, just North of San Francisco. These batteries were decommissioned after World War II, except for Battery Bravo (1 & 2), which served as nuclear missile launch sites during the Cold War. The Batteries are now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Waldrep wrote these poems on site while he was living in California (post 9/11.)
To give you an idea of what the batteries look like, here is a list of websites that offer photos and information about the batteries, located at Fort Barry and Fort Cronkhite.
Battery Rathbone-McIndoe
Battery Wallace
Battery Mendell
Battery O’Rorke
Battery Smith-Guthrie
Battery Alexander
Battery Bravo (1 & 2)
Battery Townsley
Read a review of Disclamor in Luna magazine online.
Read another review of Disclamor in Cutbank
An appraisal of Disclamor is included in my review essay "Some New Voices in Mennonite Poetry," published in the April 2010 issue of the Mennonite Quarterly Review.
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