Worship the Pig

Worship the Pig, Gaylord Brewer’s eleventh collection, is by the poet’s own definition, his “Americas book.” The migration begins from his Tennessee home to the Inside Passage of Alaska, then detours sharply south in a return to his beloved Costa Rica, then onward finally to the qualified paradise of Brazil’s Ilhabela. Brewer’s persistent obsessions—translating the call and challenge of the feral world, negotiating some truce with private ghosts—have never been more poignantly and sharply drawn. From chiseled lyrics to more expansive narratives—by turns reserved and raucous, always heartfelt and riveting—these new poems exhilarate. “No schematic for conquest, / no reckless conclusions, // no tenuous argument for connection / beyond the simple truth / of what accrues together.” At mid-career, the author called “the most natural poet in the country” by the Asheville Poetry Review continues to astonish.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“Brewer’s a wonderful writer. I love his language. His eye. His attitude. His love for the world. And his poems do what they are meant to—they tell us to pause, to wake up, to see, to not squander the immensity and beauty and pain of our lives. We have to see it all, feel it all, he’s telling us, exhorting us, this heartbroken guide, this wise, sad, and funny poet.”—Jonathan Ames

“Gaylord Brewer is the most natural poet in the country.”—Asheville Poetry Review