His entry begins:I am currently finishing Sisters: Catholic Nuns and the Making of America by John J. Fialka. I happened upon the book by happy accident, because I wouldn't normally think to read a book about nuns. My only experience with nuns was Sister Beverly Jean who taught 5th grade. I was in her class for three weeks, very much not enjoying the experience, the final straw bending when she made me sing the Star-Spangled Banner by myself in front of the class (I had a ten-year-old singing voice that made flowers flatulate.) But this book, Sisters, has dispelled me of nuns as being only knuckle-crushers. Sisters/nuns are responsible for a great many of the schools and hospitals in the country, and over the years they have been as courageous as soldiers. In fact, sisters served on...[read on]Among the praise for Mark Yakich's poetry:
"Yakich is a scary-smart poet. I especially admire poems like “Adorno” and “An Untenable Nostalgia for Chernobyl,” where he critiques sentimentality, trauma,Visit Mark Yakich's website and blog. Read sample poems from Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross, The Making of Collateral Beauty, and The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine.and the (mis)use of history in art."
--Jehanne Dubrow
"Yakich's poetry radiates an aura of fresher imaginative possibilities that is invigorating in politically literal times."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"[Yakich has] got a unique voice that combines knowing moral savvy with a sense of outraged innocence...."
--Los Angeles Times
"Poet Mark Yakich ... writes the very best kind of idiosyncratic, edgy poem. Seeing the world through his eyes makes the reader re-evaluate what a word can do, what a word can mean, even what history as we know it is all about."
--Susan Larson, Times-Picayune
Writers Read: Mark Yakich.
--Marshal Zeringue
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