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    October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard
    Unavailable
    October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard
    Unavailable
    October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard
    Audiobook1 hour

    October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard

    Written by Lesléa Newman

    Narrated by Lesléa Newman, Emily Beresford, Luke Daniels and

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    On the night of October 6, 1998, a gay twenty-one-year-old college student named Matthew Shepard was lured from a Wyoming bar by two young men, savagely beaten, tied to a remote fence, and left to die.

    Gay Awareness Week was beginning at the University of Wyoming, and the keynote speaker was Lesléa Newman, discussing her book Heather Has Two Mommies. Shaken, the author addressed the large audience that gathered, but she remained haunted by Matthew's murder.

    October Mourning, a novel in verse, is her deeply felt response to the events of that tragic day. Using her poetic imagination, the author creates fictitious monologues from various points of view, including the fence Matthew was tied to, the stars that watched over him, the deer that kept him company, and Matthew himself.

    More than a decade later, this stunning cycle of sixty-eight poems serves as an illumination for readers too young to remember, and as a powerful, enduring tribute to Matthew Shepard's life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateSep 25, 2012
    ISBN9781469206813
    Unavailable
    October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard
    Author

    Lesléa Newman

    LESLÉA NEWMAN has written many books both for children and adults, including Where Is Bear?, Cats! Cats! Cats! and Hachiko Waits. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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    Reviews for October Mourning

    4.5/5

    84 ratings15 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998. The author of this book was the Gay Awareness Week speaker at his university just a week after his death. On the ten year anniversary of the occasion, she wrote poems as a way to capture the event and some of her reactions. She used a range of poetry forms, used quotes as a way to launch different poems in the short volume. I found it to be moving and caused me to be contemplative. It was a bit didactic at times. It took a short bit of my time to read the book, it was time well spent, and the book will stay with me awhile.
    • 5/5
      I just finished reading this book, which tells the story of Matthew Shepard's murder in poetry - ranging from phantom and villanelles to found poems and haiku. It is stunning work. I am stunned.
    • 5/5
      A profoundly moving meditation. Pair this one with Marilyn Nelson's A Wreath for Emmett Till.
    • 4/5
      I thought Newman's approach to incorporating many points of view, as opposed to just Matthew's, worked really well in making the narrative all-encompassing, in addition to using a variety of forms of poetry. I also liked her use of actual quotes to supplement her fictionalized account. Readers may enjoy other stories in verse, such as Sold by Patricia McCormick.
    • 4/5
      “October Mourning” is a tribute and memorials to a 5 foot one inch, 105 pound 21 year old who was beaten mercilessly while lashed to a fence by two larger armed men. The crime was horrific and beyond despicable, and it remains in the memories of anyone old enough to recall the crime. The savage murder was committed in Wyoming in 1998 but its impact continues to be felt and experienced.
      This is a book largely told in poetry, although there is additional material in the beginning and end and a wonderful set of notes and references.
      It is difficult to find good contemporary poetry. Many, many people create things that look like poems, but miss every element of what true poetry is. Poetry captures the reader, it moves and changes them, Its words create almost mystical messages far beyond the literal meaning of what is on paper.
      When I read the introduction to “October Morning” in which the author says it is meant to be read sequentially from beginning to end, I felt like this book would end up being no more than a heavy-handed emotional outpouring designed to evoke sympathy and tears in readers. A GR review of the book from a reviewer I respect and follow, said as much. But my experience of the book differs from that of the unhappy reviewer.
      For a poem to be good, it must transcend time, reveal something about the human heart and stand on its own. There are many excellent collections of poetry by many fine poets, but even in these, only some of the poems will reach that level. This book is no different. Some of its poems are deeply flawed in a variety of manners.
      Also in other collections of actual good poets, there are poems that are universal, evoke feelings beyond their words, stand on their own,
      not needing the context of the collection in which they are embedded. This book also fits into that description. Many of its poems, taken out of the context of the book, nevertheless stand on their own and could be reproduced in a good quality anthology of poetry any time.
      This book is a snapshot of what hate looks like and of the damage done in its name. The book is an horrific reminder of what human beings are capable of. It is also a tribute to the empathy we can feel toward one another, even across years and the barriers of our dissimilarities.
    • 4/5
      This was a powerful creative retelling in free form verse of the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard. Audio was haunting. Told through the “voices” of witnesses, friends, students, the victim, the perpetrators, the inanimate objects that were part of the crime. Author published this on the 10 year anniversary of Matthew’s death.
    • 5/5
      beautifully written and incredibly powerful
    • 3/5
      Narrated by Emily Beresford, Luke Daniels, Tom Parks, Nick Podehl, Kate Rudd and Christina Traister. I remember hearing about Matt Shepard's murder but did not pay much attention to the details. This performance in audio hit home for me the raw emotions tied to this awful event and made me see the hugely powerful impact it had on GLBTs everywhere. A powerful listening experience.
    • 5/5
      A gorgeous book filled with poems from the point of view of everything from Matthew's cat, the fence, the deer, the stars above him, and more. It hurt my heart, but reading these beautiful words also healed me.
    • 4/5
      Beautiful and affecting, Leslea Newman's poetic elegy to Matthew Shepard is a must-have for school and teen libraries.
    • 4/5
      This slim volume of 68 poems chronicles the events that led to the death of Matthew Shepard, the University of Wyoming student who was brutally beaten, robbed and left tied to a fence one very cold October night in 1998. Lesléa Newman explains in the introduction that one of the last things Matthew did was attend a planning meeting for Gay Awareness Week that was set to begin. She was the event’s keynote speaker. She arrived on campus the day he died.

      As a work of historical fiction, OCTOBER MOURNING uses several poetic forms and devices to imagine specific moments from before that night and after. Some of the poems are written as monologues from people and objects: the doctor, one of the attackers, Matthew himself, the fence, the truck. There are concrete poems, haikus, and rhymed couplets; while a few are simply lists, and some are in the style of William Carlos Williams’ famous apology poem “This is Just to Say.” Explanations of the poetic forms used are included at the end of the book, making this a great resource for poetry studies, and while the poems are meant to be read as a whole, there are a number that could easily stand alone for classroom discussions.

      View this book as a poetic exercise alone and you’ll be impressed with the way the different forms highlight and capture the emotional impact of each carefully crafted poem. The majority of the poems are short and very accessible. It’s the visual imagery that is heartbreaking. Take, for example, the poem “What You Can Do in Eighteen Hours” which starts out in a relatable way with “Write a term paper/Cram for a final/Fly across the ocean” but concludes, “Wait to be discovered/lashed to a fence/Shivering under a blanket/of stars.”

      View this book in its historical context and dare to be left dry-eyed. In writing OCTOBER MOURNING as a very personal but public tribute to Matthew Shepard, Lesléa Newman chose verse to fully explore feelings of fear, hate and grief, but also empathy and understanding. This little book shines a glaring light on a senseless tragedy and makes a powerful plea for compassion. As Lesléa Newman states, “Because only if each of us imagines that what happened to Matthew Shepard could happen to any one of us will we be motivated to do something. And something must be done.”
    • 5/5
      I haven't had poetry move me so much in a while. This collection of poems brings to life the horrifying and brutal murder of gay, twenty one year old Matthew Shepard in 1998. Lesbian poet, Leslea Newman (author of "Heather Has Two Mommies") recounts the shameful and shocking incident with true grace and raw emotion. The sixty eight different poems explores the impact of Matthews deaths through fictitious monologues from the perspective of: the fence, the killers, the biker who found him, Matthew himself, mothers across the country, and more. It's a very moving piece of work and definitely deserving of the Stonewall Honor it received. A must read for everyone!
    • 4/5
      The author Leslea Newman was a speaker at the University of Wyoming a mere few days after Matthew Shepard had been killed in a hate crime, Very moving.
    • 4/5
      It takes hardly any time to read the poems in this book but I am certain that the images I got will stay with me for a long time. Matthew Shepard was a young man who attended the University of Wyoming. One night he was tricked into accompanying two other young men into a truck and on a deserted highway, beaten and left tied up to a fence. He was discovered the next day, barely alive, and taken to a hospital where he died five days later. The two men were apprehended, tried, and given life sentences. The beating took place days before a campus event to raise gay awareness with the author of this book being the keynote speaker.The poems are all told from different points of view - different people and different items like the fence that Matthew was tied to and the tree that provided the wood for the box that ultimately housed his ashes. Each serves to paint a picture representative of so many similarly unfortunately tragic episodes.
    • 5/5
      5Q 4P (my VOYA ratings). Fourteen years after the death, no, the murder, of Matthew Shepard, Lesleá Newman recalls to mind, and shares with others for the first time, that night that his life was taken out of an act of violence due to hate and intolerance. Newman's poems, like "The Fence," "The Wind," and "The Stars," give the perspective, at times eerie and beautiful, of these elements that we think of as not having a perspective, but Newman gives them one. "October Mourning" paints life as fragile and beautiful, and of intolerance and hate as something that is alive and cruel. I gave this book a 5 for quality because I thought every poem was written with heart and perspective and it really created an internal reaction. I gave a 4 rating for popularity because I think it might take a little push for teens to pick up a book about a horrible incident and one that happened over a decade ago.