New American Writing is published by OINK! Press, a not-for-profit organization registered in the State of Illinois. Contributions are welcome and fully tax-deductible.
New American Writing
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Cover: Photo by David Maisel, Library of Dust 1454
The cover photograph, Library of Dust 1454, was taken by David Maisel in a state-run psychiatric hospital in Oregon, where the patients who had died there, whose bodies were not claimed by family members, were cremated and the ashes placed in copper canisters. Thousands of the canisters were stored in an underground vault that flooded, then in a locked storage room. Each of the canisters aged quite differently, creating beautiful patterns that seem to evoke the different souls contained within. In David Maisel’s words, “Corrosion blooms wildly from the leaden seams of many of the cans.” In 2008, Chronicle Books of San Francisco published 80 of the photos in the volume, Library of Dust, along with four poetic and philosophical essays. In one essay, “Graves of the Insane, Decorated,” Michael Roth writes, “The pictures are strikingly beautiful, and yet we don’t want to be seduced by their colors, their biomorphic forms, their striking clarity. These are, after all, photographs of death, of the failure of remembrance and of the persistence of the unclaimed.” Further information is available at www.davidmaisel.com.
