Overview

Gun Poems is a startling, necessary, troubling, courageous, beautiful book. In the face of our greatest, most intractable problems, poets remember, and therefore remind us, that the imagination is the only solution. To inhabit the spirit of the gun, and therefore to confront its essence, is an act of imaginative courage. Only a poet of great skill and creativity could pull this off, and Michael Henry does. These words gather us in our sorrow and anger, so we can resist together. -Matthew Zapruder, author of I Love Hearing Your Dreams and How to Continue With its volatile trickster-sometimes a man and sometimes a lethal gun-Michael Henry's new collection chronicles our efforts to try and do right and to heal in a polarized country fixated with firearms. Somewhere between action and inaction and our daily gut checks, Gun Poems holds out its heart to us with its gruff hands and powerful poems. -Juan J. Morales, author of Dream of the Bird Tattoo Michael Henry's Gun Poems presents us with a new American anti-hero-a character with bad intentions but completely relatable insecurities. We can't help but feel Gun's longing and loss, while at the same time we laugh in recognition at his human foibles. Gun is in some way all of us. And this is the genius of the poet: his captivating language charms us with our own monstrous reflection. -J Diego Frey, author of Umbrellas or Else and The Year the Eggs Cracked Gun Poems by Michael J. Henry is a haunting, unflinching examination of America's tangled obsession with guns, masculinity, and the systemic violence of individualism. This devastating work of contemporary myth-making-a book-length conjuring of Gun, a trickster persona cut from the same cunning cloth as Marvin Bell's Dead Man or Ted Hughes' Crow, yet with distinctly American alloys of chrome and powder. -David Anthony Martin, author of The Ground Nest and others Michael Henry's mesmerizing Gun Poems summons one of the dark genies of American culture, endowing it with an eerily believable voice, psyche, and perspective. This is imaginative prestidigitation of the highest caliber, and one of the most engrossing poetry collections I've read in a long, long time. -David Wroblewski, author of Familiaris and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle Reading these daring and mesmerizing new poems is like hearing the final cries of the town fool everyone has ignored at their own peril for too long because the fool is a gun, and we are all carrying, even when we know what that costs us and what is to come. Michael J. Henry is an essential American poet, and Gun Poems is an absolutely essential new collection. -André Dubus III, author of Townie, Ghost Dogs, and House of Sand and Fog Hunter S. Thompson reportedly said that the only interesting character in American literature is a suitcase full of money. But he's wrong, it's a gun, and Michael Henry's Gun Poems is a masterpiece on the subject. Unflinching, wily, scathing, stand-up-and-slap-somebody funny, brilliant, and my favorite book of poetry in a very long time. -Ben Whitmer, author of Cry Father, Pike, and Satan is Real About the Author In 1997, Michael Henry co-foundedLighthouse Writers Workshop. His nonfiction and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. He's published two poetry collections, No Stranger Than My Own and Active Gods, and a chapbook, Intersection, as well as a nonfiction book, Mountain Biking the Colorado Trail.

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