Feeler

Co-op available; Advance reader copies available for national mailing; National advertising planned for PW, Poets & Writers, etc.; National print campaign targeting major outlets like PW, Booklist, Library Journal, The New York Times, New Yorker, etc., and the many outlets in which McHugh has already been reviewed, like The New Yorker, PBS, etc.; Online/social media campaign; eBook available; Giveaway planned; Regional Pacific Northwest Tour and Canadian tour

In Feeler, McHugh takes on the fraught subject of empathy—how much we feel, and do, for the afflicted. Since Heather McHugh first began publishing her poems in 1968, poetry readers have marveled at the immensity and range of her gift. There seems to be nothing that McHugh can’t do with words and do with high wit and sonic brilliance. In her chapbook Feeler, McHugh takes on the fraught subject of empathy—how much we feel, and do, for the afflicted. It also addresses the relation between thought and feeling: “Nowadays I cannot tell/ the two apart: can’t feel things thoughtlessly/or think things up without emotion.”  As with only the very best poets, McHugh seamlessly combines thought and feeling, in poems that are entertaining and profound.