millennYELL

millennYELL: diatribes of self-discovery is a collection of poems intending to complicate the characterization of millennials as naively hopeful or as helplessly impotent. Bryan D. Wright's first book of poetry sweeps the personal, political, social, and cultural minefields left behind by the culture warriors of America's previous generations. His poems are a lament for the loss of the commonweal during the past thirty years of American life and culture -- while also being a rally cry to take action and seek meaning in the alienation pervading American society at the outset of the twenty-first century.

Mr. Wright's poems in millennYELL are presented under four main themes of poetic expression - nihilism, longing, despair, and promise - each separated by a timeline of related events in American history from 1990 to 2020. His poetry grapples with key adversities for young adults: the tenuous grounds on which human meaning and action rest, the risks associated with desiring something over nothing, the anxiety that accompanies the pursuit of goals and values, and the latent (and dismal) prospects for success at the outset of every lifetime of endeavor. The poems - disquieting, exacting, and poignant - express key moments of personal anguish and insight that interrupted his prolonged inner dialog on the meaning of adulthood for the first generation to shape the next century and next millennium.