Bøger af Ray Mcmanus

This book "is set in a nation on the precipice of great change. Through examinations of suburban neighbors, bullies, gun violence, and vasectomy appointments, Ray McManus draws a portrait of American masculinity in the face of political division, pandemic, and cultural warfare. McManus's speaker is caught between the way he was raised and the future he wants to see for who he is raising. He can no longer rely on what he thought he knew, nor does he know what to do about it. The man rendered in these pages is a father, a son, a Southerner. And he is willing to burn it all down and start something new, only to see that the new start he is looking for has been with him the whole time"--

McManus's third book, "Punch.," is a call for the claw-hammer, a hymn to the steel toe, and a series of lonely missives from truck cabs and office cubicles. Punch. is a book about work, about the will that rises and the dust that falls. It is about being "lost, hungry, and hopeless, creeping toward the pipelines in a 78 Buick Regal with Big Star on the radio." Sometimes angry, sometimes darkly funny, these lean and muscular poems explore the world of punching in and punching out, the punch-drunk and the sucker-punched. Whether the poems are tightened by the rhythm of a hard hand, or the lines sprawl across the page with swagger, there is real music here. Brute voices, contemplative and haunting, speak to us with unwavering self-conflict and salty confidence. In these poems, life is a struggle and the end is already written, but there's something deeply moving about the resilience and resistance of these voices: "Lunch won't be here / for another hour," one says, "so when the rain / comes, it is welcome."

Selected by Kate Daniels as the winner of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, Driving through the Country before You Are Born is the first collection of poetry from Ray McManus. The speaker in these poems searches for redemption and solace while navigating from a traumatic loss in the past to a present fraught with violence and self-destruction. The volume chronicles his attempt to glean some measure of forgiveness through acceptance of his own responsibly for his circumstances. The reader is called on to witness family stories without happy endings, landscapes on the verge of collapse, and prophetic visions of horrors yet to come. From these haunting visions, the only viable salvation is rooted in hope that, out of the ruins, there remains the possibility of a fresh beginning.