{"product_id":"hershman-alec-spine-of-tpb","title":"[09\/15\/26] Hershman, Alec: Spine of the Hug","description":"\u003cp\u003eIron Oak Editions, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: September 15, 2026\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSpine of the Hug: Poems\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eby Alec Hershman is a debut collection more than twenty years in the making: fifty-three lyric poems rooted in the landscapes of Michigan and Kentucky that move through grief, desire, caregiving, and the long aftermath of childhood with rare precision and emotional courage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOrganized in three sections, [Stillness], [So I Came to Learn], and [The Past Will End], the collection traces the arc of a life: from the vivid, unresolved textures of childhood through the intimate territories of desire and loss to the long, patient work of memory and self-knowledge. The poems inhabit a world of caregiving and dying, of desire rendered obliquely, of childhood as a country that does not release its citizens. They are populated by a mother waving from the water and receding, a gambler stepping into daylight after a long night, a boy in a swimming pool turning blue from shyness, a dying man whose breath sounds like quails signing air in the thickets.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWorking in the tradition of Larry Levis, whose epigraph opens the collection, and shaped by the teaching of Carl Phillips and Frank Bidart,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eSpine of the Hug\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ebrings to American lyric poetry a distinctly contemporary sensibility: queer, geographically rooted, and unflinching in its attention to what the body knows and what the mind refuses to say.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45484224938007,"sku":"9798989608478","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/9798989608478ita_533x_6c2e654f-a85e-4994-8f95-105531ac8f3e.jpg?v=1788472609","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/hershman-alec-spine-of-tpb","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}