Four 2015 National Book Award Finalists in Poetry: A Reading

Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude—Finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry—is a sustained meditation on that which goes away– loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it — that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. Robin Coste Lewis’s Voyage of the Sable Venus—Finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry—is a triptych that begins and ends with lyric poems considering the roles desire and race play in the construction of the self. Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things —Finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry—examines the chaos that is life, the dangerous thrill of living in a world you know you have to leave one day, and the search to find something that is ultimately “disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.” Patrick Phillips’s Elegy for a Broken Machine —Finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry—bears witness to the small beauties and inevitable losses of our transient life.