Description
Poetry. Can we say "Cowboy" anymore? Have we waited long enough to need by now? Christian Anton Gerard's HOLDFAST, his second poetry collection, is a story of dissolution and resolution, of a world made round by spokeshaves and brute imagining. The poet's willow-hearted son sleeps in iambs; the bucket-truck mechanic plays Night Moves on a blue guitar; Spenser's Calidore is perhaps the alcoholic riding ragged in an F-150. At its fissive core are questions of love expired, love recovered, and self-recognition: "My voice fire-pop and invitation" admits Holdfast's speaker, "I woke a tulip field at sunrise." Gerard shows us the pasture of that weedy, human understanding in all its lushness and courtesy. Then, like the student videographer of its opening poem, he lowers the camera and extends his hand.
Author Bio
Christian Anton Gerard is the author of HOLDFAST (C&R Press, 2017) and Wilmot Here, Collect For Stella. He's received Pushcart Prize nominations, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference scholarships, the Iron Horse Literary Review's Discovered Voices Award and an Academy of American Poets Prize. His work appears widely in magazines such as The Rumpus, Post Road, The Adroit Journal, Diode, Orion, Smartish Pace, and Thrush. Gerard holds an MFA from Old Dominion University and a PhD in English from the University of Tennessee. He is an Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas- Fort Smith.
Author City: Fort Smith, AR USA