The Wet Collection - Paperback

by Joni Tevis (Author)

A stunning, intricate collection of forty lyric essays juxtaposing natural history, ancient texts, folk heroes, and found objects.

Using such models as Joseph Cornell's box constructions, crazy quilts, and specimen displays, Joni Tevis places fragments in relationship to each other in order to puzzle out lost histories, particularly those of women. Navigating the peril and excitement of an outward journey complicated by an inward longing for home, The Wet Collection follows Tevis through several adventures--one comical and stirring essay details her summer spent working as a cemetery salesman; another tells of her unmistakable horror at having to dress up like a beaver when working as a park ranger. Still others read like meditations in the style of Anne Carson, or a young Annie Dillard, and all of them are cast in the light of Tevis's Southern upbringing.

Written with a poet's lyricism, a scientist's precision, and a theologian's understanding of the world as it shifts around us, The Wet Collection is an exciting and distinctive collection.

Front Jacket

If a museum preserves things in part, Tevis reimagines them whole. . . . Sheer entertainment in the richest sense of the word.
--ORION

"These linked prose pieces, arranged like specimens in a cabinet of curiosities, are concerned with acts of making--the construction of works of art, of history, of interpretation--and their relationship to the natural world. Tevis turns the concept of 'nature writing' on its ear, bringing to her studies of the objects and scenes in her wunderkammer a fresh and surprising eye and a wide range of reference. Women's history, outsider art, geology, the Bible, posing in a beaver suit in a state park; everything fits in this delightful and deeply satisfying book."
--MARK DOTY, author of Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems

Using such models as Joseph Cornell's box constructions, crazy quilts, and specimen displays, Joni Tevis places fragments in relationship to each other in order to puzzle out lost histories, particularly those of women. Navigating the peril and excitement of outward journeys complicated by an inward longing for home, The Wet Collection follows Tevis through several adventures that coalesce into a narrative imbued with the light of Tevis's Southern upbringing.

Written with a poet's lyricism, a scientist's precision, and a theologian's understanding of the world as it shifts around us, The Wet Collection is the exciting debut of a distinctive voice.

Formerly a park ranger, factory worker, and seller of cemetery plots, Joni Tevis currently teaches literature and creative writing at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

Cover design by Christian Fuenfhausen.
Cover art: Untitled (Pharmacy), 1943, by Joseph Cornell.

Author Biography

Joni Tevis is originally from Easley, South Carolina. Formerly an Edelstein-Keller Fellow at the University of Minnesota, she received her PhD from the University of Houston. She currently teaches literature and creative writing at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. Her essays have appeared in Orion, Oxford American, Diagram, and elsewhere. Her first book, The Wet Collection (Milkweed Editions 2007), was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award.