Country of Ghost

(Paperback)

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Gaylord Brewer's ninth collection of poetry, Country of Ghost, is by turns harrowing, haunted, and darkly humorous, and always deeply felt. When the figure Ghost appears--crossing a bridge in Spain, beside a river of the dead in France, across a midnight lake in Finland--our speaker follows into a ravenous geography of longing and regret. In

Reviews

"Brewer writes as if a sly old god, wounded, lost and yet to renounce his magic. Ghost is a tour de force, part Caliban, part Ariel. Revenant, bored, hungry and amazed, Ghost will be with us ever hereafter."
--Robert Olmstead

"In this work of haunting, the possibilities for fruitful speculation and reflection are great. Gaylord Brewer's poems in Country ofGhost are, at once, whimsical and deeply affecting in their pathos. The many ghosts that inhabit these poems contend with the conundrum of regret, and desire. It takes precise, well-modulated poetry that is alive with metaphor, wicked puns, image, and acutely observed detail to achieve what Brewer does in Country ofGhost."
--Kwame Dawes

"The poems are eerie, achingly honest, conversational, and beautifully, darkly funny. Even if we are tempted to turn away from the rotting, breaking, bruised, and bleeding body, we are drawn in by the human need, the fragility, the nostalgia, the bittersweet longing of the speaker and his Ghost."
--Prick of the Spindle

Author Bio

Gaylord Brewer, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, earned a PhD from Ohio State University. He currently teaches at Middle Tennessee State University, where he founded and for twenty-one years edited the journal Poems & Plays. His most recent publication is a cookbook/memoir, The Poet's Guide to Food, Drink, & Desire (Stephen F. Austin UP, 2014). He has published 900 poems in journals and anthologies, such as Best American Poetry and The Bedford Introduction to Literature.