Selected by Andrea Hollander Budy for the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize

“In poems remarkable for their unflinching wisdom, for a maturity of vision too rarely seen in a first book, Kevin Prufer reminds us of that space beyond lullaby, of the fragility of life in a world where ‘everything’s / the chance for flying / failing somehow,’ and of loss as inevitable, the hardest truth of all–how ‘the body blooms, unfolding, / then is gone.'” —Carl Phillips