ISBN: 1937146928 9781937146924

Category: Poetry / General

Page count: 86

The poems in Break Every String remind Tony Hoagland of the hardscrabble accounts of humanity in some of our best poets, and we agree. Emotionally forthright and bruising, this is narrative lyric at its best, inviting yet unflinching. From his tour-de-force opening, "Born In The USA", Stewart invokes Springsteen, and then goes on to surprise us almost every line, through heartbreaking moments of poverty and family and the American way, By the end of the volume, Stewart has done the equivalent of break every string. Given every reason, fictional or autobiographical, to buy the gun, not the book, Stewart buys the book, not the gun. "If someone asks if poetry has saved your life, you know what to say."