 | Unmanly Grief: Poems Finalist, 2019 Miller Williams Poetry Prize "Poems that lead us to striking insights and strange destinations." The men who recur as characters throughout Jess Williard's Unmanly Grief perform their masculinity in a variety of ways: boxing, theater, brotherhood, labor, and familial and romantic love. Marked by a sharp nostalgia, Williard's poems move from Wisconsin to New York City and back, tracing the geographic movement of the speaker and his family: a teenage sister who disappears and returns, changed irrevocably; an older brother dismantled in adulthood; an ever-sacrificing father. Woven through the musculature of this varied and exciting collection, music appears as readily in dexterous formal verse as in lean, scrappy storytelling. What results is a crooning celebration of struggle and tenderness in this world, "where to be small and furious is enough." Finalist, 2020 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award from the Binghamton Center for Writers Jess Williard's poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Poetry Northwest , Third Coast , North American Review , Colorado Review , Southern Humanities Review , Poet Lore , and more. He is originally from Wisconsin and now lives in Atlanta. This is his first book. |
