North American Stadiums

Winner of the inaugural Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, North American Stadiums is an assured debut collection about grace amp;mdash; the places we search for it, and the disjunction between what we seek and where we arrive.

¿You were supposed to find God here/the signs said.¿

In these poems, hinterlands demand our close attention; overlooked places of industry become sites for pilgrimage; and history large and small amp;mdash; of a city, of a family, of a shirt amp;mdash; is unearthed. Here is a factory emptying for the day, a snowy road just past border patrol, a baseball game at dusk. Mile signs point us toward Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Salt Lake City, Chicago. And god is not the God expected, but the still moment amid movement: a field ¿lit like the heart / of the night¿, black stars stitched to the yellow sweatshirts of men in a crowd.

A map ¿bleached / pale by time and weather¿, North American Stadiums is a collection at once resolutely unsentimental yet deeply tender, illuminating the historical forces that shape the places we inhabit and how those places, in turn, shape us.