Description
Title: Wilderness//Kingdom
Author: Jory Mickelson, Winner of the Evergreen Award Tour 2019
Year: 2019
ISBN: 978-1-930446-50-2
Wilderness//Kingdom by Jory Mickelson is a sensual and poetic exploration of the West, the road, and the body. Spiritual and pastoral, this award-winning debut is not to be missed.
Jory Mickelson is a writer, educator, and retreat facilitator whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Sixth Finch, The Puritan, Hawaii Pacific Review, Mid-American Review, Diode Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, Ninth Letter, Vinyl Poetry, The Collagist, and other journals in the United States, Canada, and the UK. They are the recipient of an Academy of American Poet’s Prize and is a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry.
About Wilderness//Kingdom:
“Jory Mickelson’s Wilderness//Kingdom blew me away with its tender heart and flinty eyes. Like the man at the bar you know you’ll take home, these poems are irresistible and inevitable. Lovers—on country roads and inside the cars that drive them—are the men that populate each poem of longing, ‘the sound of pursuit still caught in its throat.’ Combining the discovery of desire with an exploration of the landscape of the Mountain West, Mickelson adds to the ever-more-robust American tradition of queering the wild and natural world. How dangerous love can be—’the mountain unable to catch / itself’—especially when embracing the freedom to love our own selves. Here is a book worthy of every stolen and cherished encounter.” —Keetje Kuipers, author of All Its Charms
“‘Stillness pays the most to study,’ writes Jory Mickelson in Wilderness // Kingdom. Stillness has many facets in his hands. The hesitations that hinder queer youth from truly living: ‘leaning to carry / difference in the quiet of myself.’ The silences between father and son. The feverish hush after ecstasy or death. The enriching tranquility of marriage: ‘I taste each of your / doubts.’ Mickelson not only studies stillness, he spins it into gorgeous motion. His language resonates and is agile; the pauses and swerves of life are visible, startling. Wilderness //Kingdom is a remarkable and propulsive debut.” —Eduardo Corral, author of Slow Lightning
