What Came After

Description

“A searing collection of poetry by an accomplished writer.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“In generously insightful and economically crafted poems, What Came After offers revelations such as, ‘History. We’d rather not know…Until it comes for us. Then we know.’ And while Christopher Stewart is right in his perceptions of common human behaviors, his poetry is uncommon. He makes personal history—material about his boyhood, mother, lovers, mental health—a story I very much want to know. Stewart’s poetry is intimate at the same time that it includes others, seeing the migrant crossing the desert in the dark and sensing the presence of the cancer patient down the hall, and connects to a larger sense of the world. His poetry confronts life’s terrors and the threat of its end, yet, thanks to his command of form, music, syntax, and image, when I finish reading this book, the feeling that haunts me is, yes, melancholy but, more than that, lovely.”—Rose McLarney, author of Colorfast

“What Came After offers a series of poems that explore, in exquisitely human and intimate detail, the struggles associated with mental illness . . . These poems are a reckoning with ache, memory and self, grounded in the heavy empathy of the shared moment and the relative distance of time.”—Quraysh Ali Lansana, author of the skin of dreams: new and collected poems 1995-2018 and Opal’s Greenwood Oasis.

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