Wolves in Shells: The Backwaters Prize in Poetry
Autor Kimberly Ann Priesten Limba Engleză Paperback – oct 2025
Wolves in Shells is a modern monomyth telling the story of a woman navigating homelessness, trauma, and memories as she attempts to leave a violent partner. Reflecting on her familial heritage, this survivor grapples with the way she, the women of her history, and her daughter have been conditioned to accommodate the demands of the male ego and predation. Reflective, clear-eyed, and incisive, the poems of Wolves in Shells feature O-Six, a wolf born into the rewilding territory of Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s who serves as a metaphor for women who must cope with violence and survive on their own. Drawing from Gaston Bachelard’s quote “wolves in shells are crueler than stray ones,” the narrative considers how survival requires a balance of protectiveness, risk, trust, and escape.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781496243706
ISBN-10: 1496243706
Pagini: 96
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.14 kg
Editura: The Backwaters Press
Colecția The Backwaters Press
Seria The Backwaters Prize in Poetry
Locul publicării:United States
ISBN-10: 1496243706
Pagini: 96
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.14 kg
Editura: The Backwaters Press
Colecția The Backwaters Press
Seria The Backwaters Prize in Poetry
Locul publicării:United States
Notă biografică
Kimberly Ann Priest is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University. She is the author of the poetry books Slaughter the One Bird and tether and lung.
Cuprins
The Howl
Says the Mollusk
I Wanted to Be a Boy
When Anxious, They Tell Us to Make Our World Smaller
Old Shell
Wolf Story
My Mother Wears a Bikini at South Haven Beach
A Pedagogy for Lesser Bodies
How to Do Subtraction
Taxonomy
Elegy for Charley
Field Note on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space
Two Wolves
Everything’s Fine
Open Mic
Steven Turnball
After Leaving
I Don’t Tell My Daughter I Wrote Another Wolf Poem
Among Fingernail Clams
Protections
At the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum
A Patch of Blue
Luxuries
On the Ishnala Trail
Dad
For Practical Purposes
Because Memory, I Am Told, Is Unreliable—
Irregular Patterns of Endangered Migrations
Mountain Story
Field Note on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space
The Unusual Art of Living Well
How to Forgive the Predator
After I Tell a Man I Can’t Date Him Because of My Hidden Disability
Hunter’s Moon
Nocturne
Gestation
America
Borders
Unpacking
Preacher’s Daughter
My Daughter and I Gather Stones at Empire Beach
At the Butterfly Habitat
First Visit to the Sister Survivors Exhibit
Spirit of the Animal
Upon Viewing Katrín Sigurdardóttir’s Metamorphic
At a Monastic Retreat
The Hunter
The Book of Birds
After My Father Tells Me He Loves the 23rd Psalm
Field Note on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space
My Grandmother’s Ashes
The World Is Whatever We Choose to Make It
Elegy for My Daughter Who Has Never Known a Paradise
Civil Assault
This Much
Root
They Tell Us to Live in the Moment Because the Moment Is All We May Have
Smile Back
Acknowledgments
Notes
Says the Mollusk
I Wanted to Be a Boy
When Anxious, They Tell Us to Make Our World Smaller
Old Shell
Wolf Story
My Mother Wears a Bikini at South Haven Beach
A Pedagogy for Lesser Bodies
How to Do Subtraction
Taxonomy
Elegy for Charley
Field Note on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space
Two Wolves
Everything’s Fine
Open Mic
Steven Turnball
After Leaving
I Don’t Tell My Daughter I Wrote Another Wolf Poem
Among Fingernail Clams
Protections
At the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum
A Patch of Blue
Luxuries
On the Ishnala Trail
Dad
For Practical Purposes
Because Memory, I Am Told, Is Unreliable—
Irregular Patterns of Endangered Migrations
Mountain Story
Field Note on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space
The Unusual Art of Living Well
How to Forgive the Predator
After I Tell a Man I Can’t Date Him Because of My Hidden Disability
Hunter’s Moon
Nocturne
Gestation
America
Borders
Unpacking
Preacher’s Daughter
My Daughter and I Gather Stones at Empire Beach
At the Butterfly Habitat
First Visit to the Sister Survivors Exhibit
Spirit of the Animal
Upon Viewing Katrín Sigurdardóttir’s Metamorphic
At a Monastic Retreat
The Hunter
The Book of Birds
After My Father Tells Me He Loves the 23rd Psalm
Field Note on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space
My Grandmother’s Ashes
The World Is Whatever We Choose to Make It
Elegy for My Daughter Who Has Never Known a Paradise
Civil Assault
This Much
Root
They Tell Us to Live in the Moment Because the Moment Is All We May Have
Smile Back
Acknowledgments
Notes
Recenzii
“In the first poem, Kimberly Ann Priest evokes a moment of ‘dismantled vigilance—nothing encroaching, nothing to hunt,’ and this becomes the quest of these stunning poems as the speaker moves through the effects of abuse and homelessness into a world free of predation. The voice in this book is strong, astute, and vulnerable as the poet reclaims her history and its fragmented beauty alongside the story of a wolf, her totem creature. Priest writes with a keen eye and great musical dexterity, creating a book that is both compelling and crucial.”—Betsy Sholl, Maine poet laureate emeritus and author of As If a Song Could Save You
“Of wolves and shells, holy howls and spirals, does Kimberly Ann Priest weave her sacred tapestry of lyrical outpouring; in one poem she writes ‘because I feel like thunder often, dance like snow; because I am living.’ And her poems are so fiercely alive and soaring and plunging on the page that it both hurts and fills one up to read them. Hers is a startling new voice in American poetry that can never be forgotten.”—Robert Vivian, author of All I Feel Is Rivers
“Wolves in Shells is a powerful collection that details what it means to be a woman in the twenty-first century. In it, Kimberly Ann Priest documents a life of resilience after homelessness, abuse, intergenerational trauma, and witnessing the violence of America. Drawing from her cross-country travels and emotional connections to wildlife—particularly the wolves of Yellowstone National Park—Priest illustrates, in captivating detail, the strength of an individual woman who is both hunted and too often harmed but who ultimately ‘become[s] her own pack’ to ‘survive.’”—Sunni Brown Wilkinson, author of Rodeo, winner of the 2024 Donald Justice Poetry Prize
“Wolves in Shells by Kimberly Ann Priest is a piercing rebuke of ‘our dependency on machinery/ that harms us.’ That machinery is patriarchy, marriage, and gender inequality. A blistering chronicle of a life lost—children, home, health—and regained. Muriel Rukeyser asked, ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?/ The world would split open.’ Each of these poems moves with the honesty of an ax.”—Tomás Q. Morín, author of Let Me Count the Ways: A Memoir
Descriere
Wolves in Shells is a modern monomyth telling the story of a woman navigating homelessness, trauma, and memories as she attempts to leave a violent partner.