Driving through the Country before You Are Born: Poems

By Ray McManus

Dark poems struggling to reconcile a haunting loss and troubled present

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Release date: Jun 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781611171174

Ray McManus

Ray McManus is the author of four books of poetry: Punch. (winner of the 2015 Independent Publishers Book Award for Best Book of Poetry in North America), Red Dirt Jesus (selected by Alicia Ostriker for the Marick Press Poetry Prize 2011), and Driving through the country before you are born (winner of the South Carolina Book Prize in 2006), and a chapbook called Left Behind. He is the co-editor for the anthology Found Anew with notable contributors with South Carolina ties. His poems have been published in numerous journals such as Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, and POETRY magazine. He lives in South Carolina where he teaches for USC Sumter and serves as the Writer in Residence for the Columbia Museum of Art.

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Reviews for Driving through the Country before You Are Born

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those poetry collections that has such a simple power as to remind you why you read poetry at all. The poems are unforced, organic, and careful--each one ripe with emotion and plays of language and image, each one clear, and holding no more language than it needs.This is one of those books that I'll return to again and again, and which anyone can enjoy. And for me, it's one of those books that reminds me why I love reading and writing poetry.Absolutely recommended.