Description
This is a story, writes Luke Hathaway, of transformation. It is a death. It is a birth. / Birth, of course, is very terrible: what can survive it? His fourth collection, and first since Years, Months, and Days, a New York Times Best Poetry Book of 2018, The Affirmations is a work of trans poetics in the most radical sense. Begun in motherhood, in an experience of birth as an experience of affirmation, and continued through Hathaway’s transition, The Affirmations is a rerelationing with self and other, elder and myth. It’s a book about what happened when Hathaway fell in love—and about what happened when love shot the messenger.
Praise for Years, Months, and Days
“[Years, Months, and Days] is carried by Jernigan’s obvious respect for her sponsoring material and by her superb ear.”—New York Times
“Exquisite . . . deeply resonant . . . There’s often a metaphysical cast to her forthright observations, which makes them both evocative and poignant.”—Toronto Star
“[This] small and beautiful book should be on your bedside table even if it is as heaped as mine. Just 4” by 5” and fewer than 70 pages, the book consists of untitled, spare, and simply-worded poems which evoke the cycles of life, the seasons, and human longing for meaning and connection. The poems expand in your head, opening your mind to matters beyond the day-to-day.”—Arc Poetry Magazine
