Dismantling The Hills

A collection of poetry representing the forests of the Pacific Northwest and the small towns and people who live there.

"A lyricist at heart, McGriff is a masterful maker of metaphor."—Third Coast "There is majestic beauty in these descriptions, and it is clear that McGriff honors this place as a place—not as mere setting, but as a distinct element of his verse."—Gently Read Literature Michael McGriff's second full-length collection explores interior landscapes and illustrates life in a rural community in the Pacific Northwest. Whether tender or hard-hitting, McGriff juxtaposes natural images of deep forests, creeks, coyotes, and crows against the harsher oil-grease realities of blue-collar life, creating poems that read like folk tales about the people working in grain mills, forests, and factories. "New Civilian" The new law says you can abandon your child in an emergency room, no questions asked. The young father carries the sleeping boy through the hospital doors. Later, alone, parked at the boat basin, he takes a knife from his pocket, cuts an unfiltered cigarette in two, lights the longer half in his mouth. He was a medic in the war. In his basement are five bronze eagles that once adorned the walls of a dictator's palace. Michael McGriff attended the University of Oregon; the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in creative writing; and Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow. He is the co-founding editor and publisher of Tavern Books and lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Michael McGriff lets his bucket down on a long long rope, to tug the darkness up into light.-Albert Goldbarth

Winner, 2021 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Michael McGriff’s Eternal Sentences bears witness to the world of gravel roads, working-class families, and geographic isolation in poems that illuminate both common occurrence and the territories of the surreal. Here, in rendering every line as a single sentence, McGriff depicts a world seen through fragments, quick leaps, and wild associations. Haunted as much by place and people as by the possibilities of image-making itself, Eternal Sentences is a song for the hidden depots of rural America.

From 1980 to 1993, the domestic production of uranium declined from almost 44 million pounds U3O8 to about 3 million pounds. This retrenchment of the U.S. uranium industry resulted in the permanent closing of many uranium-producing facilities. Current low uranium prices, excess world supply, and low expectations for future uranium demand indicate that it is unlikely existing plants will be reopened. Because of this situation, these facilities eventually will have to be decommissioned. The Uranium Mill Tailings and Radiation Control Act of 1978 (UMTRCA) vests the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with overall responsibility for establishing environmental standards for decommissioning of uranium production facilities. UMTRCA also gave the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) the responsibility for licensing and regulating uranium production and related activities, including decommissioning. Because there are many issues associated with decommissioning-environmental, political, and financial-this report will concentrate on the answers to three questions: (1) What is required? (2) How is the process implemented? (3) What are the costs? Regulatory control is exercised principally through the NRC licensing process. Before receiving a license to construct and operate an uranium producing facility, the applicant is required to present a decommissioning plan to the NRC. Once the plan is approved, the licensee must post a surety to guarantee that funds will be available to execute the plan and reclaim the site. This report by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) represents the most comprehensive study on this topic by analyzing data on 33 (out of 43) uranium production facilities located in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Washington.