{"product_id":"winter-stranger-9781639550418","title":"Winter Stranger","description":"\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, Jackson Holbert’s \u003ci\u003eWinter Stranger\u003c\/i\u003e is a solemn record of addiction and the divided affections we hold for the landscapes that shape us.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eIn 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\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eincite a complex emotional discourse on what it means \u003ci\u003eto leave\u003c\/i\u003e—if it’s ever actually possible, or if our roots only grow longer to accommodate the distance.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003ePunctuated by recollections of loved ones consumed by their addictions, \u003ci\u003eWinter Stranger\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e“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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eWinter Stranger \u003c\/i\u003eaudiobook read by Jackson Holbert is available everywhere you listen to audiobooks. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Jackson Holbert","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42960248930422,"sku":"9781639550418","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/1374\/6550\/files\/CoreSourceHub_66fc40c9-80c6-4e9e-aced-d1342555c289.jpg?v=1767798360","url":"https:\/\/ingramacademic.com\/products\/winter-stranger-9781639550418","provider":"Ingram Academic \u0026 Professional","version":"1.0","type":"link"}