Overview

Winner of the 2024 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize The Deep Blue of Neptune is a striking, meditative collection of poems by Terry Belew, which reminds readers of the necessity of empathy in the midst of uncertain and unsettling times. Set against a rural backdrop, Belew's poems reside in the everyday––driving on gravel backroads, roaming the aisles of Walmart, and doomscrolling on a smart phone––to highlight the contradictory qualities of existence. Belew utilizes a variety of forms, familiar and invented, including free verse, sonnets, sestinas, and ""wish lists,"" to explore his speakers' inner lives. Often haunted by violence, from car crashes to gunshots, these poems are a reflection of how people must navigate the bleak landscape of the digital age. The Deep Blue of Neptune is a masterfully crafted debut, blending lyricism with wry humor to address the complexities of our relationships with other people, with nature, and with ourselves.

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9781606354988

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Reviews

""A stunning debut that probes the fragile and fierce in the human condition with great poetic aplomb. These remarkable poems navigate the precarious beauty of impermanence, the tension between what is eroding and what lingers, where even the smallest moments carry the weight of what it means to be alive. Fiercely unflinching, the collection presents luminous fragments of memory, the grief that shapes us, and the quiet miracles that anchor us.""--Elizabeth A. I. Powell, author of Atomizer ""Terry Belew recognizes the necessary marriage between birth and decay, celebrates the fertile sludge that yields life's music, and gives us poems that sift through uncomfortable realities. The Deep Blue of Neptune is grounded by a sensitivity to place while being elevated by the author's dry wit and flair for soundplay. This collection is full of stories and incantations that challenge us to look unsparingly at human nature. 'I know how much forgiveness is like a pool of water, //ordinary and impermanent, ' one speaker notes, 'until the impact of a stone.' We cast stones, we break and mend one another, we love and endure. This is the marrow of poetry.""--Sandra Beasley, author of Made to Explode: Poems

Author Information

Terry Belew lives in rural Missouri with his wife and two sons. He earned an MFA from the University of Nebraska-Omaha and an MA from Missouri State University. His work has appeared in recent issues of Southern Humanities Review, Meridian, Tar River Poetry, The Pinch, and Storm Cellar, among many others.

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