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9781960145659

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Reviews

""Chaun Ballard's compelling debut collection, Second Nature, weds formal engagement and innovation with explorations of American history as it intersects with African American lives. An interrogation of archives and what's preserved there engenders voices of figures like Crispus Attucks. These poems rooted in those lives--the poet's family and community--take on broader implications when nonhuman beings like the weaver bird, the robin, and fireweed are brought into the conversations. These poems draw on the past for our present and future. Ultimately these poems are, as one of Ballard's poems puts it, ""stories"" that should be ""ringing in the ear of each generation."" --Sean Hill author of Dangerous Goods ""What you hold in your hands is a collection of poems that braids together the unencumbered memories of family lineage and African American history. Chaun Ballard explores what it means to be shaped by others, to make a way in the world carrying the pieces of the imperfect men and women who brought us to this moment. Ballard's poems speak to the idea of a continuum, articulating the life of the poet on his own terms without forgetfulness or a simple investment in the fragmented lie of the individual. These are poems of community and history, of the collision of time, of what it means to live in ancestry and in the particulars of place."" --Matthew Shenoda, from the FOREWORD Forthcoming blurb J. Drew Lanham

Author Information

Chaun Ballard is a doctoral student of poetry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of the chapbook Flight (Tupelo Press), which received the 2018 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. Ballard's poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Narrative Magazine, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Northwest, The Missouri Review, The New York Times, and other literary magazines. Ballard lives in Lincoln, NE.

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