Spring Hunger

In Spring Hunger, Keith Liles "arms his thirst" with the outrages of our era and writes a searing poetry that refuses to behave as if the word is more important than the world. Earnest, insightful, and razor-sharp, these poems arise from a sensibility in which ethics and aesthetics are never at odds. What an exciting, skillful, and substantial debut! Richard Hoffman, poet, author of Half the House: a Memoir, and the poetry collections, Without Paradise and Gold Star Road Wait-person poetry! Sentient wait-person! Wait-person informed and engage. But stop, this is the U.S., not Europe, isn't it? In fact, it's Alaska, Vatican of American myth-making. Where then is the McPoetry, Creative Writing's contribution to U.S. mindlessness and ticket into its market? Nowhere in sight. Instead, poems daring enough to write about "dweebiness" and risk being dweeby to do so, that make use of "the prose virtues" as well as the forms and experiments poetry invites, a young man's poems of navigating the disappointments and seductions of male identity in 21st century workaday Anchorage. Anything but cool, Liles unruly intelligence makes us laugh, look again, rethink, and finally remember why poetry has a long, loved populist history in the U.S. Linda McCarriston, poet, author of Little River - Poems Selected & New, Eva-Mary and Talking Soft Dutch