Description

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Winner of the 2017 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

Patrick Rosal’s brilliant fourth collection of poems is ignited by the frictions of our American moment. In the face of relentless violence and deepening racial division, Rosal responds with his own brand of bare-knuckled beauty.

Rosal finds trouble he isn’t asking for in his unforgettable new poems, whether in New York City, Austin, Texas, or the colonized Philippines of his ancestors. But trouble is everywhere, and Rosal, acclaimed author of My American Kundiman, responds in kind, pulling no punches in his most visceral, physical collection to date. “My hand’s quick trip from my hip to your chin, across / your face, is not the first free lesson I’ve given,” Rosal writes, and it’s true—this new book is full of lessons, hard-earned, from a poet who nonetheless finds beauty in the face of violence. 

About the Author

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Patrick Rosal is an interdisciplinary artist and author of four previous books, most recently Brooklyn Antediluvian, winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award. He earned fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Senior Research Program. He is Professor of English and inaugural Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers-Camden.