{"product_id":"elegy-with-beautiful-child-constant-laval-williams-9781639552054","title":"Elegy with Beautiful Child: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\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\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\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\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\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\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Constant Laval Williams\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1639552057\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781639552054\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Milkweed Editions\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 01\/19\/2027\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 96\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback","brand":"Constant Laval Williams","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":49001240658175,"sku":"9781639552054","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/elegy-with-beautiful-child-constant-laval-williams-9781639552054","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}