The Wonder Years

<i>The Wonder Years</i> is a book made from wreckage. And with materials unceasingly sharp and surprising, Katsimbras creates a language of “clean brutality.” In these pages, we see the drought-wracked West decay into a coyote's rib bones, this animal split into ribbons and tied around nightfall. Families are torn and torn apart, a marriage cracks, relationships fail, and “in the spaces between all the names for empty that will never fill,” the magic here is the feat of existence amid so many disappearing acts. Though unflinching in their examination of hurt, Katsimbras' poems are fierce with protection and love. The relationship between father and son is a rebellion against history—a promise in ink and blood to sever a cycle of paternal harm, to be a true light, even if just a single bare bulb, shining against the coming dark.