The Sunshine Mine Disaster: A Book of Poetry

Brock's Sunshine Mine Disaster is a fantastic series of poems mingled with other life documents--a truly original and exciting reading experience. With this collection, Brock drags poetry out of the darkness of MFA-approved academic boredom and into the light of life, death and transcendence. The poems themselves remind me of DH Lawrence in subject and scope. A major addition to contemporary poetry and literature.

Brock combines original poetry with various historical documents to depict events, real and imagined, surrounding the 1972 Idaho silver mine explosion, which killed 91 men. The result is an exciting tour de force, which the author modestly calls "an example of life-writing" rather than a book-length poem with epic tendencies. Brock invents the persona of the miner Dan Taylor through which to view the disaster, even to the extent of creating a fourth grade report Taylor wrote-"The Rainbow Trout in Idaho." Other perspectives, real and imagined, unfold as the poem moves toward its final section, a moving prayer uttered by the entombed Taylor. Along the way the reader encounters tragedy, irony, even comedy, in the actions of the mine owners, various authorities, victims, and their families. Brock's knowledge of mines and their technical vocabulary is extensive and superbly woven into the poem. American poetry could use a lot more of what The Sunshine Mine Disaster has. Highest recommendation for all readership levels. --from Choice Magazine, June 1996