Wilder: Poems

“After the explosion: the longest night.”

In Wilder—selected by Rick Barot as the winner of the 2018 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry—Claire Wahmanholm maps an alien but unnervingly familiar world as it accelerates into cataclysm. Here refugees listen to relaxation tapes that create an Arcadia out of tires and bleach. Here the alphabet spells out disaster and devours children. Here plate tectonics birth a misery rift, spinning loved ones...