Blessing the Exoskeleton: Poems - Paperback

by Andrew Hemmert (Author)

Blessing the Exoskeleton is a southerner's book about Michigan. Written over a two-year period in Kalamazoo, Andrew Hemmert's poems address climate change, labor, love, and his attempts to live joyfully in a deteriorating world. Though the majority of these poems are narrative, they approach their stories in roundabout and slanted ways. A meditation on job seeking begets a story about the author's father attempting to catch an owl in a fishing net. A fire down the road from the author's apartment begets a meditation on telemarketing. Personal histories collide with headlines, resulting in poems that convey everyday experience and seek to praise it. Despite the northern cold and the tyranny of the news, Hemmert develops his own theories for navigating his life, finding beauty in an unfamiliar landscape and climate.

Author Biography

Andrew Hemmert is the author of Blessing the Exoskeleton (University of Pittsburgh Press) and Sawgrass Sky (Texas Review Press). His poems have appeared in various magazines including The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review. He currently lives in Thornton, Colorado.