The Blue Staircase & Other Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781950063024)

The Blue Staircase & other poems is a collection of thirty-six poems that examine the author's personal relationship with Salem, the historical and literary city in northern Massachusetts. Sheldon asks of himself, as well as his audience, "Is there a Salem still?" Tackling its historical, as well as literary heritage, Sheldon takes on the persona of Giles Corey in the title poem (a Puritan farmer and family man convicted and ultimately crushed to death during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692). Elsewhere Sheldon investigates his childhood as a Salem native and interrogates his own literary position to many Massachusetts' authors, from Hawthorne to Lowell, from Emerson to Frost, from his own contemporary position as a Midwestern transplant.