b o y

By: Wise, Consuelo

A hybrid book-length poem in which the protagonist grapples with a great loss.

In this hybrid of lyric poetry and essay, Consuelo Wise utilizes repetition, fragmentation, and syntax to construct a form that repeatedly falls apart. Breaks in lines and fragmented stanzas are followed by accumulative rushes, slashes, brackets, and words pushed together.

Throughout this book-length poem, Wise composes a meditation and an investigation into loss and identity. Moving between sound and image, aggression and subtlety, b o y pries open memories that resist understanding but also refuse to be forgotten. Wise peels back layers of mourning, considering how it can be experienced as a personal, inherited, environmental, social, and historical phenomenon. Throughout, the protagonist in b o y reenvisions ways to process a great loss, listening closely and searching for words while "the earth is shaking and the silence pressing down."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1632431300
• ISBN13: 9781632431301
• Release Date: December 2024
• Publisher: Omnidawn
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 7.1" x 9.2"