Groundglass: An Essay

Poet Savage combines memoir with environmental and social commentary in her haunting debut, an account of the damage wrought by industrial waste. “The volume of polluted places” in America “overwhelms,” she writes, citing the 1,322 sites on the EPA’s Superfund National Priority List in addition to another 450,000 active brownfields, or “old polluted industrial sites.” Savage grew up and still lives near waste sites in Minnesota (“I can remember the noise of industry coming through the screened window... the place I’m from has long been a magnet for illegal dumping.”) and uses her father’s terminal stomach cancer, possibly caused by pollution, as a through line as she explores fears of what might be happening in her own body (“environmental pollutants... can be transmitted genetically”), and the racist history behind where waste sites were placed. Savage gives voice to those fighting at the front lines of their communities, as well, and shares sobering statistics about the prevalence of toxic locations (“roughly 60% of the U.S. population” lives within three miles of waste sites). It makes for a work of both elegiac beauty and horror, with no end in sight; as one woman observes, “They say this is a site of cleanup, but you can’t clean up what’s constantly coming down.” This one’s tough to forget. (Aug.)