{"product_id":"laval-williams-constant-elegy-withpb","title":"[01\/19\/27] Laval Williams, Constant: Elegy with Beautiful Child","description":"\u003cp\u003eMilkweed Editions, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: January 19, 2027\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSelected by Patricia Smith for the Jake Adam York Prize, an unflinching, profoundly gorgeous debut collection about beauty, pain, and the resilience of the human spirit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the haze of gothic nightclubs, in the stark pang of childhood memories and the blurry confusion of drunken ones, darkness and light stand in a state of oppositional symbiosis: One cannot exist without the other. Recovery and the radical perspective shift that accompanies it magnify these extremes--the darkest nights, Constant Laval Williams posits, constitute one's personhood as much as the brightest moments. Only through this duality can the poet examine a stolen childhood, a litany of loss, and what it means to be whole. \"Whatever happened \/ to me as a child,\" he writes, \"I was still \/ a beautiful child, and a hornet nest \/ is still a kind of cathedral.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA chronicle of wreckage written from a lifeboat, these poems hew beauty from shadows: \"a lisp of lavender,\" \"a trembling clutch of stars,\" \"the miracle \/ of still being here.\" They reconsider the intrinsic nature of trauma and linger willingly in the bareness of vulnerability. The speaker is reborn like \"the cicada \/ beneath your unlit window splitting open \/ at the head, dragging its raw body out \/ into the world, to leave behind its old form.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChristened \"a raw and utterly sparkling debut\" by Patricia Smith, \u003ci\u003eElegy with Beautiful Child\u003c\/i\u003e interrogates the neglected recesses of the soul, hoisting from them unexpected, glittering gems.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45359788326935,"sku":"9781639552054","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/81cA84X2qjL._SL1500.jpg?v=1785533977","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/laval-williams-constant-elegy-withpb","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}