Circle Back: Poems by Adam Clay

Circle Back: Poems

$16.00
$16.00
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Circle Back: Poems by Adam Clay
  • Circle Back: Poems by Adam Clay
Circle Back: Poems

Milkweed Editions

Circle Back: Poems

by Adam Clay

$16.00
$16.00
5 left
An aching meditation on the cyclical nature of grief and memory's limited capacity to preserve everything time takes from us.How does one make sense of loss--personal and collective? When language and memory are at capacity, where do we turn? Confronted with "a year meant to end all / those to come," acclaimed poet Adam Clay questions whether anything is "wide enough to contain what's left / of hope." In the absence of a clear way forward, the poems of Circle Back wander grief's strange and winding path. Along the way, the line between reality and dreams blurs: cows stare with otherworldly eyes, 78s play under cactus needles, a father becomes his own child, and the dead become something more complicated--a "sketch turned to painting / left in a room dusty from / lack of passing through."But amidst these liminal landscapes, a "thread of promise" persists in poetry. As flawed as language is, we still turn to it for longevity, for love, like "Keats, / sketching himself back into place." Vulnerable and nuanced, Clay details the difficult work of healing--and in doing so, captures those needful moments of reprieve in grief's "strange circle." Two friends dashing through a sprinkler. A garden of startled birds. Out for a run some gray morning: a sudden patch of wildflowers. Circle Back is a bared heart, one readers will find as thoughtful as it is tender.
Book Details
Publisher:
Milkweed Editions
ISBN:
9781639550982
Binding:
Paperback
Pages:
88
Authors:
Adam Clay
Published Date:
2024-03-12
Language:
English
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All Poetry Death, Grief, Loss Places

About Adam Clay

Editor of Autocorrect and formerly of the Mississippi Review, where he served for seven years beginning in 2017, Adam Clay also spent nearly two decades co-editing Typo Magazine. He directs Creative Writing and serves as associate professor of English at Louisiana State University, holding a PhD from Western Michigan University and an MFA from the University of Arkansas. His fifth collection, Circle Back (Milkweed Editions, 2024), followed To Make Room for the Sea (Milkweed Editions, 2020) and Stranger (Milkweed Editions, 2016). Earlier books include A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, 2012) and The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006). Clay received a Literary Arts Fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission in 2018.

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