The King's Question: Poems

Brian Culhane's deeply felt and accomplished debut, winner of the poetry foundation's Emily Dickinson First Book Award

Let just one of those quicksilver hours be returned to me,

With my knowledge now of the world, and not a boy's,

With all that I have become a lighted room. One hour

To ask the question that burned, once, in a King's throat.

—from "The King's Question"

In the poet Brian Culhane's The King's Question, fragments of the ancient past emerge from contemporary life to reveal rich...