Boy

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."

Author: Consuelo Wise
Publisher: Omnidawn
Published: 12/27/2024
Pages: 136
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 9.21h x 7.09w x 0.24d
ISBN13: 9781632431301
ISBN10: 1632431300
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | American | General
- Poetry | Women Authors
- Poetry | Caribbean & Latin American

About the Author
Consuelo Wise is a Guatemalan-American poet, writer, and visiting scholar at Portland State University in Oregon.