What May Be Lost

What counts as an appropriate claim on or disavowal of grief? Well, What May be Lost shows us that grief also has brilliance-its generals on horseback, its fairgrounds with their animal skies, its famous outlaws. This is to say that the grief at the heart of this book is not a hazy space to linger or sigh over but a series of widening questions and premises which are as frighteningly perceptive in their implications as they are casual in tone. "Nothing is not spun by grief," Cory Brown tells us, only to later trouble the sweep-"Accidental death's funny, though." We're counted, this very fine book informs us, by more than we know.

-C. S. Giscombe, author of Border Towns and Ohio Railroads

In the poem "Bus Trip" in Cory Brown's collection here, What May Be Lost, we're told by the narrator that although he can talk "with the best of them, ...in the context of the inherent vulnerability of this mortal coil it is important not to say more than is called for, ever." These capacious poems encompass exquisitely detailed observations of the natural world, wry commentary on a world that includes pop music and culture as well as intellectually rigorous philosophical inquiry, imaginative and rich evocations of the experiences of being a child and a father, a young boy, a lover, a husband, a grown man aware he is aging. With all this range, these moving poems only say just what is called for.

Sandra Kohler, author of The Ceremonies of Longing and Improbable Music