MANOLERIA

Tupelo Press

ABOUT THE BOOK

Winner of the Tupelo Press / Crazyhorse First Book Prize

Under the influence of broadcasts such as public radio’s “Marketplace” (a daily roundup of stock reports and business news), Daniel Khalastchi composed a series of character-driven poems whose recurrent narrator is physically and mentally manipulated while the world around him takes little notice. Through their chaos and horror, these poems ask a reader to question the ways in which our careening healthcare system, crumbling financial/housing/job markets, and war on multiple fronts are actually affecting us—both inside and out.

PRAISE FOR MANOLERIA

“In Manoleria, the body, broken apart ‘in elegant stress,’ recongregates. Formally, the poet is taking us through the emotional work of picking up pieces. Despite the splintering, despite the hemorrhage, somehow ‘all is accounted for.’ A cardinal debut.…”

—D. A. Powell

“With composure so unflinching as to be unnerving, the speaker of this mysterious, deft collection explicates what would be, in other hands, unimaginable and unspeakable atrocity.… Khalastchi uses a steady, steady hand to reach into the quiver.”

—Robyn Schiff

“Part nightmare journal, part survivor’s narrative, this haunting volume recounts one soul’s journey through the selva oscura within.… [A] music emerges that bears ultimate promise, for ‘somewhere inside I hear calling a shepherd.’”

—Srikanth Reddy

“Uncertain as to whether they are buried or planted, growing or dead, the poems in Manoleria know when they are pushed up out of the dirt by some unholy hand what they can claim is a world punctuated by gasps, loneliness, and shadows that may be nothing more than wreckage. These poems remind me of Beckett’s Lucky (slave, clown, stranger, preacher); they are as terrifying and beautiful. Like Lucky they bring with them an indecipherable hope. Like Lucky they know to be fully alive means to embrace the soft panic only language can bring.”

—Sabrina Orah Mark