Mothman Apologia

This volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets explores love, grief, the opioid epidemic, and coming of age "Elegiac and witty."--Elisa Gabbert, New York Times, "The Best Poetry of 2022" "These poems name the hurt wrought upon the meek that makes the elegy, here, as much an exaltation of the living as a mournful dirge for the land."--Major Jackson, Vanderbilt University The 116th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, Robert Wood Lynn's collection of poems explores the tensions of youth and the saturation points of knowledge: those moments when the acquisition of understanding overlaps with regret and becomes a desire to know less. Comprising poems of place set across the Virginias, this collection includes an episodic elegy exploring the opioid crisis in the Shenandoah Valley as well as a separate series of persona poems reimagining the Mothman (West Virginia's famed cryptid) reluctantly coming of age in that state's mountains and struggling with the utility of warnings. These are narrative poems of love and grief, built from a storytelling tradition. Taken together they form an arc encompassing the experience of growing up, looking away, and looking back.

The 116th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, exploring love, grief, the opioid epidemic, and coming of age.

Home of the first settlement in the United States and known as Old Dominion and The Mother of Presidents, the state of Virginia’s artistic output proves among the most fecund in the nation, evidenced in this ninth volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology. This collection includes well-known, established, and celebrated poets such as Charles Wright, Claudia Emerson, Gregory Orr, Ellen Bryant Voigt, R. T. Smith, Forrest Gander, and Rita Dove, and the editors have dedicated equal focus on newer, diverse poets who continue to broaden and enrich the literary legacy of this beautiful state.

This year’s winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Sean Singer’s Discography. Playful, experimental, jazz-influenced, the poems in this book delight in sound and approach the more abstract pleasures of music. Singer takes as his subjects music, jazz figures, and historical events. Series judge W. S. Merwin praises Singer for his “roving demands on his language” and “the quick-changes of his invention in search of some provisional rightness.”

“Loren Coleman has taken a hard look at one of America’s most haunting monsters and discovered that it’s more terrifying than we ever knew. Read this book now—before it’s too late. You’ve been warned.” —Richard Hatem, screenwriter, The Mothman Prophecies Mothman: Evil Incarnate, by cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, is a brand new companion title to the late John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies (1975), which investigated the sightings of a winged creature called Mothman and became popularized in the 2002 movie of the same name starring Richard Gere. With new material by Loren Coleman, extensive annotations on each chapter of The Mothman Prophecies, a detailed Mothman death list, and a gallery of images, Mothman: Evil Incarnate comprises the most up-to-date information on Mothman phenomena. In addition to providing context to John Keel’s cult classic, Coleman expands on missing details from the movie, explores the deaths that followed the West Virginia incident, describes the recent Chicago Mothman sightings, and delves into the life of John Keel. This companion book should find its place on every Mothman aficionado and cryptozoology fan’s bookshelf. The mystery continues…

Post-divorce dating is one more cause for celebration (or a quick call in to the police) in Beth Bosworth's revelatory new book, The Source of Life and Other Stories. The spine of this collection is a series of linked stories about Ruth Stein, a Brooklyn author whose first book has exposed her father's abuses; while the voice here, speaking across a lifetime, ranges from bittersweet to humorous to lethal. In other stories Bosworth's narrators—a mother left to care for her son's suicidal dog, an editor haunted by a dog-eared manuscript—seem to grab hold of the reins and run off with their fates. Meanwhile Bosworth explores the extended family, the bonds of friendship, an apocalyptic Vermont, the rank yet redeemable Gowanus Canal; also rites of passage, race relations, divorce, middle-aged romance, dementia, funerals, alcoholism, and the Jewish religion. Reality is just another stumbling block for Bosworth's characters, who might help themselves but don't always choose to. There are leaps of faith here, nonetheless, as the collection dispenses a kind of narrative psychotropic for survival and redemption, with a chaser of humor mixed in.

"Forging through this voluminous collection is akin to visiting at length with a charismatic, if highly disturbed, relative. Generally, the poems start out presenting facades of well-mannered normalcy, e.g., brief narratives or odes to nature and the sea, but then something shifts and goes terribly right. A sentence turns odd and powerful; a quiet, streak of insanity emerges; a young girl leaves her scent upon a young boy's body. Sometimes a poem pops up that is dangerous from start to finish, such as "The Suicide Eaters" or "Drunks," about a reading at a V.A. hospital for recovering addicts and alcoholics. Smith is highly conscious of word choice. He tinkers with grammar and rhythm just enough to be utterly engaging, leaving the reader exhausted after the visit, but wiser for the effort."- Publishers weekly.

An “extraordinary first novel” about a father trying to escape the past and a son lost in a world of imaginary voices—winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize (Booklist). Levi Revel is a boy in danger of losing his family and maybe his mind. He’s in awe of his father, Everest—a majestic dreamer, a master builder, a man with a violent, secret past. As the family moves from state to state, Levi hears solace in the voice of God, a voice that sends him preaching from treetops and roofs. But as the family begins to fall apart and Levi enters adolescence, he starts to hear more troubling things. When Everest takes him on a high-speed, cross-country chase to win back Levi’s mother—by force if necessary—Levi realizes how much danger they all are in. Tender and frightening, More Like Not Running Away takes readers across America, through the eyes and ears of a child whose family is haunted by a past they can’t outrun. “Shepherd’s family-in-decline frames an impressive father-son character study.” —Publishers Weekly “This extraordinary first novel about the blood ties that bind fathers and sons packs such emotional power that reading it is like sustaining repeated blows to the heart.” —Booklist “Shepherd is a master craftsman, and the subtlety of his art, the unassuming elegance of its architecture, rendered me spellbound and finally grateful.” —Bob Shacochis, author of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul “A riveting exploration of what it is to be an outsider even in your own head. Shepherd has written a gripping story of childhood angst—psychologically thrilling, lyrically exact.” —Janet Burroway, author of Writing Fiction