North American Stadiums

Winner of the inaugural Max Ritvo Poetry Prize,North American Stadiumsis an assured debut collection about grace-the places we search for it, and the disjunction between what we seek and where we arrive. "You were supposed to find God here / the signs said." In these poems, hinterlands demand our close attention; overlooked places of industry become sites for pilgrimage; and history large and small-of a city, of a family, of a shirt-is unearthed.Hereis a factory emptying for the day, a snowy road just past border patrol, a baseball game at dusk. Mile signs point us toward Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Salt Lake City, Chicago. Andgodis not the God expected, but the still moment amid movement: a field "lit like the heart / of the night," black stars stitched to the yellow sweatshirts of men in a crowd. A map "bleached / pale by time and weather,"North American Stadiumsis a collection at once resolutely unsentimental yet deeply tender, illuminatingthe historical forces that shape the places we inhabit and how those places, in turn, shape us.