Unmanly Grief: Poems

Finalist, 2019 Miller Williams Poetry Prize

“Poems that lead us to striking insights and strange destinations.”
—Billy Collins

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

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Unmanly Grief: Poems

Finalist, 2019 Miller Williams Poetry Prize

“Poems that lead us to striking insights and strange destinations.”
—Billy Collins

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

19.95 In Stock
Unmanly Grief: Poems

Unmanly Grief: Poems

by Jess Williard
Unmanly Grief: Poems

Unmanly Grief: Poems

by Jess Williard

eBook

$19.95 

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Overview

Finalist, 2019 Miller Williams Poetry Prize

“Poems that lead us to striking insights and strange destinations.”
—Billy Collins

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


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781610756624
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Publication date: 03/27/2019
Series: Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 50
File size: 902 KB

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Contents Series Editor's Preface Acknowledgments A Man in the Stands ONE On Boxing Practice The Problem of Ankles For Floyd Patterson: A Letter Townie Elegy Doctrines on Getting Lost Rod Filament Andronicus with Tar For Claudius Kissing At The Touching TWO To Clarey On Summer in Southern Wisconsin From the Top Float Most High Picture of a Girl At McKinley Aquatics Center Look Let's Intuit Something Worth It Soundstripe Shadowbox THREE Hands Twice Turn Generous The Spoils Even Heat Collateral Siren for Manny Pacquiao Following Feat Apologia Watch for It Everywhere Grace to Our Spines The Creatures We Must Become Notes
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