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YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR: LOVE POEMS

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought....Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows....If you can feel that staying human is worthwhile, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them. —George Orwell, 1984

Inspired by a rereading of 1984 during the pandemic and the turbulent years of the 2016-20 Trump administration, Rebecca Foust’s new chapbook, YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR: LOVE POEMS, explores the disturbing parallels between George Orwell's totalitarian dystopia and America's emerging political landscape. Julia and Winston’s love story beats at the heart of Orwell’s book, where a declaration of personal love becomes an act of rebellion and a way to preserve privacy, personal identity, and even reality. These poems believe that holds true now, as well. The book, runner up in the 2024 Backbone Press Contest, was released in October 2024—order here.

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Rebecca Foust

Rebecca Foust is the author of the books ONLY, Paradise Drive, All That Gorgeous Pitiless Song, and, in collaboration with artist Lorna Stevens, God, Seed: Poetry & Art about the Natural World. She has also published three chapbooks: The Unexploded Ordinance Bin, Dark Card and Mom’s Canoe. A new chapbook, YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR: Love Poems, was runner up in the 2024 Backbone Press contest and was released in October 2024, just before the next election. Inspired by the disturbing parallels between Orwell's dystopia and our own country's recent tilt towards totalitarian politics, these poems focus on the love story between Julia and Winston and ask the question of whether love is possible, or may even be the key to surviving, difficult political times such as these.