Winner of the inaugural Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, North American Stadiums is an assured debut collection about grace--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--of a city, a family, a shirt--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"--and "an engrossing urban pastoral" (Washington Post)--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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 06/08/2021
ISBN: 9781571315359
Pages: 112
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.50d