Execute the Office: Essays with Presidents
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Description
Colin Rafferty’s Execute the Office uses lyric prose and formal invention to explore the humanity, or lack thereof, that thrived in each of the forty-five American presidents. Whether these powerful individuals were celebrated for infamous deeds and heroism, or forgotten as placeholders in the annals of American history, too often presidents are commemorated by the sterility of simple fact. Execute the Office builds upon factual accuracy with essays that are equally invested in lyrical writing and experimental forms. To balance these factions, Execute the Office uses constraint, metaphor, allusion, and epiphany to explore not just the facts and artifacts of history, but describe the connections between those facts and human nature in thought-provoking and inventive ways. These essays discuss the modes in which we remember. Through death songs, footnotes, infinite rooms, evacuation routes, and nomenclatures, to name a few examples, these diverse essays engage with history from fresh perspectives. Execute the Office contains histories in and of unusual objects. While unfamiliar at first, they soon become distinct, unforgettable, profound, human.
ISBN
978-1-936097-32-6
Publication Date
2021
Publisher
Baobab Press
City
Reno (NV)
Keywords
Presidents, United States, History
Disciplines
American Politics | United States History
Recommended Citation
Rafferty, Colin, "Execute the Office: Essays with Presidents" (2021). English & Linguistics Books. 3.
https://scholar.umw.edu/elc_books/3