In this stunning new collection of poetry, Mary Mackey offers her readers fifty-eight intensely lyrical poems written with the same skill and passion that made her previous collection Sugar Zone winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Complex yet entirely accessible, the poems in Travelers With No Ticket Home form a visionary meditation on nature, childhood, the destruction of the rainforest of the Amazon, and the real and psychological landscape of travel. Taking us from a small farm in Western Kentucky to the jungles of Brazil, Mackey touches on the broader human feelings of wonder, displacement, grief, love, and love's endless complications. Here too, for the first time, readers will find Mackey's complete Kama Sutra of Kindness, a series of seven love poems written over the last thirty years.
It is difficult to resist the temptation to compare Mary Mackey to Elizabeth Bishop. In both we experience the elusive spirit of life south of the Equator; both poets are stunningly imagistic and musical and awake to topography, sociology, and the world beyond.
- The Huffington Post
"Mary Mackey joins other visionary poets of depaysement - Henri Michaux in Asia, John Ash in Anatolia, Sharon Doubiago in Peru, Lorca in Manhattan . . . recovering a lost part of herself in the edgy lyricism of the tropics, haunted by fado, forro, and death. The lines are tense with the vulnerability of lovers, strangers, and travelers with no ticket home."
- Dennis Nurkse
"Mackey's crisp-edged perceptions are set down with a sensuous, compassionate, and utterly unflinching eye."
- Jane Hirshfield
An absolutely beautiful work, vivid and complex. - Synchronized Chaos Magazine
Mackey's poems are earthy and lyrical as they journey into the human heart.
- The Oakland Tribune
It is difficult to resist the temptation to compare Mary Mackey to Elizabeth Bishop. In both we experience the elusive spirit of life south of the Equator; both poets are stunningly imagistic and musical and awake to topography, sociology, and the world beyond.
- The Huffington Post
"Mary Mackey joins other visionary poets of depaysement - Henri Michaux in Asia, John Ash in Anatolia, Sharon Doubiago in Peru, Lorca in Manhattan . . . recovering a lost part of herself in the edgy lyricism of the tropics, haunted by fado, forro, and death. The lines are tense with the vulnerability of lovers, strangers, and travelers with no ticket home."
- Dennis Nurkse
"Mackey's crisp-edged perceptions are set down with a sensuous, compassionate, and utterly unflinching eye."
- Jane Hirshfield
An absolutely beautiful work, vivid and complex. - Synchronized Chaos Magazine
Mackey's poems are earthy and lyrical as they journey into the human heart.
- The Oakland Tribune
Used availability for Mary Mackey's Travelers with No Ticket Home