Country of Lost Sons: Poems

Jeffrey Thomson's second collection of poems, The Country of Lost Sons, investigates the narrative environment of childhood, especially the way violence is inscribed on children through myth, culture, and legend. The poems trace the growth of the author's young son (his vulnerability and equal potential for violence) across a landscape of rewritten myth and narrative. From the Trojan War (bracketed as it is by the deaths of two children, Iphegenia and Astyanax) through the Biblical accounts of Job, Jeremiah, and Jephthah to the modern tragedies of the war in Kosovo, AIDS, and the contemporary culture of violence, the poems build to a culmination of fear that is only tempered by love, grace, and the redemptive power of storytelling itself.

About the Author
The Country of Lost Sons is Jeffrey Thomson's third collection of poetry. His first collection of poetry was The Halo Brace (Birch Brook Press). Renovation, his third book, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press. He has also published poetry and nonfiction in Quarterly West, New Delta Review, Puerto del Sol, Gulf Coast, and Willow Springs, as well as critical essays on Sandra Cisneros, James Wright, Derek Walcott and the environmental elegy. His works have won numerous awards, including the Master's Poetry Contest and the Academy of American Poets' Prize on three occasions.

What Others Have Said
In the midst of so many fast-talking contemporary poetry books comes Jeffrey Thomson's lovely The Country of Lost Sons. Here is a book that chooses tender, meditative music over electric chatter. Here are the poems that tell us poetry can still explore and heal earnestly. More than praise, I want to offer gratitude for such an intimate book. After reading it, you will want to offer gratitude too. -Terrance A. Hayes