Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest
Poems
13 July 2004
Description
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.
B. H. Fairchild's memory systems are the collective vision of America's despairing dreamers—failed baseball players, oil field laborers, a surrealist priest, college boys at a burlesque theater, the last remaining cast members of The Wizard of Oz. Looming over all is the fact and the mystery of our continued renewal.
Reviews
"These poems make a rare, magical conjunction between a communal sense of place and a solitary habit of memory." — Eavan Bloand
"Fairchild is in touch with that America we almost forgot, melancholy, dream-ridden, wistful, ghost-like." — Gerald Stern
"What an exaltation!" — Richard Howard
Awards
Winner — Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, 2004
Winner — California Book Award, 2002
Winner — National Book Critics Circle Award, 2002
Also By: B. H. Fairchild 
An Ordinary Life: Poems
Paperback, 2024
A poet whose work is "a cause of celebration" (John Freeman, Boston Globe) reveals the extraordinary within the ordinary
An Ordinary Life: Poems
Hardback, 2023
A poet whose work is “a cause of celebration” (John Freeman, Boston Globe) reveals the extraordinary within the ordinary.
The Blue Buick: New and Selected Poems
Paperback, 2016
“[B. H. Fairchild] is the American voice at its best: confident and conflicted, celebratory and melancholic.”—The New York Times
The Blue Buick: New and Selected Poems
E Book, 2014
“[B. H. Fairchild] is the American voice at its best: confident and conflicted, celebratory and melancholic.”—New York Times
Usher: Poems
Paperback, 2011
"Meaty, maximalist, driven by narrative, [Fairchild] stakes out an American mythos."—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times