Middletown

In Middletown, her third book of poems, Stephanie Rogers reflects on her chaotic childhood in the drug-addled industrial wasteland of Middletown, Ohio. In an engrossing collection of formal beauty, sardonic wit, scathing anger, and class resentment, Rogers’ uniquely vivid voice describes a transformation from a frightened but defiant little girl to a desperate, angry adolescent, and finally, to an adult coping with the death of her estranged father, an addict. In the end, Middletown reveals...