Ghost, like a Place

In his sophomore effort, Pollock (Spit Back a Boy) gathers a wide range of direct, plainspoken lyrics that deal with childhood, family, rural life and beauty, human (and boyish) cruelty, and newfound fatherhood. These poems directly and indirectly tie these themes to larger issues of societal violence, race, and gender. Pollock tells of a group of boys, the speaker among them, throwing stones at a dying rat: “In that hour/ or the next, the thing/ must have died, killed/ not by us—mercy.” El...