Winter Stranger: Poems
Written by Jackson Holbert
Narrated by Jackson Holbert
()
About this audiobook
Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, Jackson Holbert’s Winter Stranger is a solemn record of addiction and the divided affections we hold for the landscapes that shape us.
In the cold, seminal countryside of eastern Washington, a boy puts a bullet through his skull in a high school parking lot. An uncle crushes oxycodone into “a thousand red granules.” Hawks wheel above a dark, indifferent river. “I left that town / forever,” Holbert writes, but its bruises appear everywhere, in dreams of violent men and small stars, the ghosts of friends and pills. These poems incite a complex emotional discourse on what it means to leave—if it’s ever actually possible, or if our roots only grow longer to accommodate the distance.
Punctuated by recollections of loved ones consumed by their addictions, Winter Stranger also questions the capricious nature of memory, and poetry’s power to tame it. “I can make it all sound so beautiful. / You’ll barely notice that underneath / this poem there is a body / decaying into the American ground.” Meanwhile, the precious realities vanish—“your hair, your ears, your hands.”—leaving behind “the fucked up / trees,” the “long, cold river.” In verse both bleak and wishful, Holbert strikes a fine balance between his poetic sensibilities and the endemic cynicism of modern life.
“It is clear now that there are no ends,” Holbert writes, “Just winters.” Though his poems bloom from hills heavy with springtime snow, his voice cuts through the cold, rich with dearly familiar longings: to not be alone, to honor our origins, to survive them.
Jackson Holbert
Jackson Holbert is the author of Winter Stranger. He was born and raised in eastern Washington. His poems have appeared in Narrative, The Nation, and Poetry. He received an MFA in Poetry from the Michener Center for Writers. He is currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and lives in Oakland, California.
Related to Winter Stranger
Related audiobooks
The Clearing: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn the Night Field Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5North American Stadiums Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCanopy: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red Suitcase Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fuel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Human Resources: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaps You Can't Make Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fixer: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlue Portugal and Other Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Milk Hours: Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Of Cockroaches and Crickets: Learning to Love Creatures That Skitter and Jump Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Transition: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Root Fractures: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lemon Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDialogue with a Somnambulist: Stories, Essays & A Portrait Gallery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNobody's Pilgrims Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gilded Auction Block: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bonds of Love & Blood: Short Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5things left unsaid Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhen I Was the Wind Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Loose of Earth: A Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rabbit Hole: Book One Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnder a Kabul Sky: Short Fiction by Afghan Women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Nature of Desert Nature: Meditations on the Nature of Deserts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFat Time and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Long Form Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Transaction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTransfer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Poetry For You
Pretty Boys Are Poisonous: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: A New Translation by Caroline Alexander Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Milk and Honey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf: A New Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Other Eden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gift of Rumi: Experiencing the Wisdom of the Sufi Master Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Citizen: An American Lyric Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spirits in Bondage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Classic Hundred Poems: All-Time Favorites Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf: Translated by Seamus Heaney Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5W. B. Yeats: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: with Pearl and Sir Orfeo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poems of T.S. Eliot Read by Jeremy Irons Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Metamorphoses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Temple Folk Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Ching: The Book of Change Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poetry of Walt Whitman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rumi's Little Book of Life: The Garden of the Soul, the Heart, and the Spirit Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for Winter Stranger
0 ratings0 reviews