Mountain Amnesia
(Colorado Prize for Poetry, 2023)

The poems in Mountain Amnesia rebuild a new world—and self—in the wake of destruction and loss. Influenced by the landscape of rural Appalachia, these poems depict a nature relentlessly working on its own disappearance for survival. Decaying plants and animal remains are housed in the same world as ramps and bellflowers on the cusp of blooming.

These poems do not placate or cover up the inevitability of death, but rather use this knowledge to seek connection and make meaning: “how little and yet / how much it matters to count the dead.” Mountain Amnesia seeks a path through destruction, using ruin to clear the way for new beginnings; or, as Thompson writes, “the painful, florid bloom of passing forward.” This collectionis a testament to survival and resilience, and animal encounters—the lonely fox, the folded fawn, the returning whale, the emerging voles—become new myths along the way.

Praise for MounTain Amnesia:

Mountain Amnesia is a heart-wrenching account of how the body remembers, becomes a feral archive, and sifts through the wildness: ‘For anything to emerge / from crisis, crisis must show its face. / But crisis is only the beginning.’ In carrying our wounds, we discover that ‘there is no one on the other side’ of the mountains that we abandon or the mountains we live in the shadows of, except the self in waiting—to lull us back to our corporeal dwelling, to ‘sing in its ragged globe,’ to find a devotion of healing.”
—Felicia Zamora, final judge, author of I Always Carry My Bones

Thompson has crafted nothing less than a sacred text.”
—Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets

"Thompson is a master of the lyric. Reading these poems is like catching up with an old, good friend. [ ] The language is rich, eclectic, and reflexive in the best ways, mining and weaving together the personal, worldly, and pop cultural into fresh spins on the triumph of pain and the painful triumph of art over pain."

—Jake Syersak, Heavy Feather Review’s Favorites of 2023