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Martha Serpas's Double Effect reimagines a principle first outlined by St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica, which considers whether an action is morally permissible if it causes harm while bringing about a good result. In resonant verse pointed by Cajun language, these poems measure the good that can come from destructive situations: maternal deprivation, spiritual poverty, mania, ecological devastation. Serpas shows that compromised marshes and the Gulf of Mexico offer surprising sustenance and clarity. Time is marked by feast days, hurricanes, celebrations, accidents, and rescues along southern Louisiana's eroding coasts. Double Effect ultimately finds joy in survival, in love, and in spiritual fulfillment.
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Reviews
"[Previous praise] Martha Serpas shows herself to be a prophet in a double sense. She anticipated the ecological destruction of much of her native state, and she earns the authentic moral authority of the Spirit. She is something magnificently new in American poetry, a Cajun visionary who fuses the legacy of Bishop and Swenson with her own rebel and poignant Catholicism."
Harold Bloom
"[Previous praise] Martha Serpas is a quiet, thoughtful poet with a love of simple diction, conventional form, and strong, regular rhythm"
Women's Review of Books
"[Previous praise] Artfully evokes the beauty and power of the Louisiana bayou, building a case for the survival of a landscape and culture in danger of being exterminated, not only by nature's forces, but by human carelessness and greed."
Rattle