Kevin Ducey’s Rhinoceros was selected from over 1,000 manuscripts by Yusef Komunyakaa for the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. With lyrical turns and metaphorical sways, Rhinoceros embodies mythologies that are brought down to earth and riffs on history, desire, death, sex and food. We have lunch with Hawking and Disney before stopping in to see how Robert Browning’s recording session with Thomas Edison is getting on. (They hate each other.) Komunyakaa writes in his introduction: Rhinoceros has a playfulness that pulses alongside a seriousness, and this rippling effect resonates beneath the skin… . A keen imagination drives these impressive poems.

Kevin Ducey teaches creative writing at the University of Notre Dame and lives in South Bend, Indiana.