Set to Music a Wildfire

Winner of the 2018 Ohioana Poetry Award

In Lebanon during the civil war, a teenage boy and his family witness leveled cities, displaced civilians, the aftermath of massacres. Resources are scarce and uncertainty is everywhere. What does it mean to survive? To leave behind a home torn apart by war? To carry the burden of what you’ve seen across an ocean?

These poems follow a man in search of security as he leaves his country for America, falls in love, and becomes a single father to three daug...