Rational Anthem e-bog

Finalist, 2022 Miller Williams Poetry PrizeIn a voice at times electrified by caustic cynicism, at other times stripped bare by grief, Casey Thayer's Rational Anthem offers wry tribute to "e;the greatest country God could craft with the mules he had / on hand."e; In seeking to tell the story of the ragged world around him, Thayer examines the links among flag-waving populism, religious fervor, and toxic masculinity. Here male intimacy-among childhood friends, between father and son, and in the tenuous bonds between young adults-generally finds acceptance only when expressed through a shared passion for guns and hunting: "e;I helped my father clean his hands with field grass, / convinced we had shared a moment / in rolling the internal organs out of the abdomen."e;In "e;How-To,"e; the book's closer-a mash-up of instructions from active-shooter trainings attended by the poet-Thayer grasps at strategies for surviving a world where we have come to see school shootings as routine: "e;Grab a textbook, they instructed my child, and hug it to your chest over your heart."e;Formally deft and lyrically dense, Rational Anthem asks why we find it so hard to change the stories we keep repeating.