Model Disciple

A mesmerizing and moving first collection, Model Disciple gives us a poetry of two minds. Confounded by Japanese-Canadian legacies too painful to fully embrace, Michael Priors split speakers struggle to understand themselves as they submit to their reinvention: I am all that is wrong with the Old World, / and half of what troubles the New. Prior emerges as a poet not of identity, but identities. Invented identities, double identities, provisional identitieshis art always bearing witness to a sense of self held long enough to shed at a moments notice. Model Disciples Ovidean shape-shifting is driven by formal mastery and mot juste precision. Its also one of the most commanding poetic debuts in years.