Blessing the Exoskeleton

Blessing the Exoskeleton is a southerners book about Michigan. Written over a two-year period in Kalamazoo, Andrew Hemmerts poems address climate change, labor, love, and his attempts to live joyfully in a deteriorating world. Though the majority of these poems are narrative, they approach their stories in roundabout and slanted ways. A meditation on job seeking begets a story about the authors father attempting to catch an owl in a fishing net. A fire down the road from the authors apartment begets a meditation on telemarketing. Personal histories collide with headlines, resulting in poems that convey everyday experience and seek to praise it. Despite the northern cold and the tyranny of the news, Hemmert develops his own theories for navigating his life, finding beauty in an unfamiliar landscape and climate.