Camouflage for the Neighborhood

Poetry. From toy guns to weed-covered bunkers, this series of prose poems examine the ways the franchises of war pervade our quotidian lives and the complicity that the speaker, her family, and her suburban hometown endure but also share in the propagation of violence.

"Utterly unlike any book of poetry or prose poetry you'll read in this or any other year, CAMOUFLAGE FOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD has the sharp beauty of a handmade Clovis-point flint tool, and cuts as deeply into one of the central issues of our age: the homemade, always personal violence we do to one another on this earth, and the interconnection of lives in which it takes place."—Jane Hirshfield

"In CAMOUFLAGE FOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD, Delany-Ullman meditates on the never-ending home front of war. It is an internalized landscape that would otherwise drift into the erasure of history, were it not for Delany-Ullman's vigilant witness. For years now, I've advocated for writers to focus on war and the long shadows it casts here at home. It's exciting to see Delany-Ullman working within this tradition, layering this meditation with the various wars and aspects of conflict that make up a large portion of contemporary American life."—Brian Turner

Lorene Delany-Ullman has most recently published creative nonfiction and poetry in AGNI, Cimarron Review, Zócalo Public Square, Naugatuck River Review and Chaparral. Her poems have been included in anthologies such as Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer's Disease (Kent State University Press, 2009) and Alternatives to Surrender (Plain View Press, 2007). She is currently collaborating with artist, Jody Servon, on Saved, an ongoing photographic and poetic exploration of the human experience of life, death, and memory. Delany-Ullman teaches composition at the University of California, Irvine.