Overview

Shaped by years spent teaching deployed American soldiers overseas, ""Dead Boys I Have Known"" moves across landscapes in Afghanistan, Qatar, South Korea, Kuwait, Djibouti, Jordan, Bahrain, England, Japan, and the United States-confronting suicide, violence, and cultural fracture while remembering fallen soldiers, lost lovers, troubled students, and the many ""dead boys"" who continue to live in the shadows of those who survive them. In light of the poet's lived experience, this collection carries a heightened sense of urgency and relevance.

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Reviews

Joanna Grant's ""Dead Boys I Have Known"" is exuberant in its lamentation. Yes, there are the boys who died in youth and adulthood-she looks on them with erotic, motherly and teacherly eyes. But the verse letters addressed to the ghost of Sylvia Plath hold equal poignance. What's more, Grant knows when to cheer as well as when to grieve. She celebrates sexuality and even menopause. She has lived all over the world, and it shows. Her cosmopolitan perspective on war and global politics sends the reader traveling far and wide to locales as exotic as Alaska, South Korea and Qatar. If you want the full range of life, the grief and the glory, this book provides it in spades. Aaron Poochigian, author of Four Walks in Central Park and Mr. Either/Or and translator and teacher of the Greek and Roman classics Joanna Grant writes with heart and depth about the realities of life (and death) in the modern world. Her collection Dead Boys I Have Known focuses a keen eye on the horrors of war, the grief of loss, suicide, and her own insignificance faced with all that she has observed, as in 'Reeds': 'I am small / I whisper // this is who I am / forgive me.' She captures a feeling of urgency using a variety of forms from free verse to beautifully complex haibun, with a stop along the way for the epistolary. This is a moving collection that takes the reader on a journey of both hurt and hope. Which is the road and which the destination? Read it and decide for yourself. Ace Boggess, author of Tell Us How to Live and The Prisoners

Author Information

Joanna Grant was born in Rome, Georgia, but lives closer to Rome, Italy, now. For almost sixteen years, she has lived and worked overseas from her native America, enriching and complicating her sense of home, family, and belonging. She teaches college classes to deployed American soldiers stationed in countries outside the US. To date, she has lived and worked in England, Japan, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Djibouti, South Korea, Jordan, Bahrain, and Qatar. Her new full-length poetry collection, The Roman Bowl, is forthcoming in March 2026 from Sheila-na-Gig Editions.

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