Learning to Drown

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"Learning to Drown is that rare book of poems you read over and over again, savoring its texture, taste, and cohesion. SM Stubbs delivers poems that are thrilling in their tone and form and exhilarating in their stunning metaphorical leaps, yet remain tightly controlled, accessible, and thematically cohesive. He reminds us that 'history is how we're tethered to certain/stretches of land.' In poem after gripping poem, he explores how our experience of the past-geographical, ideological, and personal-is essential and traumatic simultaneously. These are vigilant, luminous, necessary poems."

• Steve Bellin-Oka

author of Instructions for Seeing a Ghost

"Like a 'flame on a candle that won't quit, ' the poems in Learning to Drown shine an incandescent and intimate light upon memory, childhood, and survival in the aftermath of trauma. From barstools to backyards in late summer, SM Stubbs brings his deeply perceptive and vulnerable observations to the most meaningful and devastating moments of his life. Told in unflinching detail, these poems are a testament, giving voice to the complicated journey from ruin to rebirth, dazzling us with 'a beauty we have to tilt our heads to see.'"

• Vandana Khanna

author of Burning Like Her Own Planet

and Afternoon Masala