A01=Steve Healey
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Author_Steve Healey
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DCF
childhood anxiety
childhood shame
cia
civilian life
clandestine terminology
clever wordplay
code words
cold war
COP=United States
deception
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
divorce
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
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Erasure poetry
Espionage
family secrets
father son relationships
growing up
Language_English
national security
PA=Available
paranoia
poetry about dads
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
ruse
softlaunch
surveillance
Product details
- ISBN 9781566895613
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 24 Oct 2019
- Publisher: Coffee House Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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A father revealed as a spy, a child unmoored from normalcy—in Safe Houses I Have Known, poems ripple with the secrets that we keep from ourselves and each other.
As a child during the height of the Cold War, Steve Healey learns that his father is a spy for the CIA. Beneath the banality of everyday life—the suburbs of Washington, DC; school and play; his parents’ deteriorating marriage—assumed names, parallel lives, and myriad Cold War menaces linger. Drawing from CIA training manuals and pop culture references alike, Healey’s poetry is both intimate and claustrophobic. In these poems, the natural anxiety of childhood is compounded by the weight of both national and family secrets, and Healey draws deep parallels between the shaky foundations of truth in his past and the paranoia and obfuscation that envelops our nation’s present.
As a child during the height of the Cold War, Steve Healey learns that his father is a spy for the CIA. Beneath the banality of everyday life—the suburbs of Washington, DC; school and play; his parents’ deteriorating marriage—assumed names, parallel lives, and myriad Cold War menaces linger. Drawing from CIA training manuals and pop culture references alike, Healey’s poetry is both intimate and claustrophobic. In these poems, the natural anxiety of childhood is compounded by the weight of both national and family secrets, and Healey draws deep parallels between the shaky foundations of truth in his past and the paranoia and obfuscation that envelops our nation’s present.
Steve Healey is the author of two previous books of poetry, 10 Mississippi and Earthling, both from Coffee House Press. His poems have been published in magazines such as American Poetry Review, The Awl, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Jubilat, and in anthologies, most recently The New Census: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. He’s a professor of English and creative writing at Minneapolis College.
