FLOODED

In first-person free verse, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, residents comment on their lives and dreams before and after the catastrophic flood of 1889.

The six main voices in the cast are younger than those in Jame Richards’ similarly versified account, Three Rivers Rising (2010)—at least until the aftermath, when Andrew Carnegie and other members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, two survivors who unsuccessfully sued them for damages, Red Cross founder Clara Barton, and, most poignantly, unidentified (but perhaps previously met) victims chime in. Burg invents some characters, but everyone given a first and last name is historical, and she takes such pains to describe the flood’s direct causes and actual events in the poems that her appended note seems superfluous. The expressed feelings and words are all her own, though, and if most of the speakers sound more like mouthpieces than distinct individuals, both the intensity of the tragedy and a sense of outrage that the negligent parties escaped punishment come through clearly. Except for the personified river’s contributions, which are nature notes cast into solemn, italicized streams of one- to three-word lines, everyone’s mildly elevated language and cadence sound so much alike that without the identifying labels it’s hard to tell one from another. Still, readers will come away with a clear idea of the flood’s causes, perpetrators, and shocking toll. An absence of descriptors points to a White default.

Moving, though more about the disaster itself than its human cost.