boy

A hybrid book-length poem in which the protagonist grapples with a great loss.

In this hybrid of lyric poetry and essay, Consuelo Wise utilises repetition, fragmentation, and syntax to construct a form that repeatedly falls apart. Breaks in lines and fragmented stanzas are followed by accumulative rushes, slashes, brackets, and words pushed together.

Throughout this book-length poem, Wise composes a meditation and an investigation into loss and identity. Moving between sound and image, aggression and subtlety, boy pries open memories that resist understanding but also refuse to be forgotten. Wise peels back layers of mourning, considering how it can be experienced as a personal, inherited, environmental, social, and historical phenomenon. Throughout, the protagonist in boy reenvisions ways to process a great loss, listening closely and searching for words while "the earth is shaking and the silence pressing down."