All the Possible Bodies - by Iain Haley Pollock (Paperback)

About the Book

"Steeped in the myths we spin about self, family, and nation, the poems of All the Possible Bodies attend to the complexities of violence in America, racial justice, and the intersection of personal and national identity. Pollock's third collection is an emotionally candid and intimate portrait of our varied identities as Americans: the ways we treat one another, the value we assign to each others' lives, and the persistent internal conflict that tugs between our desires and greater duty. With clarity of storytelling, musicality of lyric, and crispness of language and image, All the Possible Bodies asks: How do we make peace with our hypocrisy and complicity in a social order that harms us all? Can and should we? Singular in its telling and universal in feeling, All the Possible Bodies seeks to answer these questions through its examination of the complicated emotional and spiritual states characteristic of contemporary American life"--

Book Synopsis

Memory, story, impressions, witness, culpability, our very humanness course through this book and strip us, via our interaction, of pretense. The poems are language- and image-driven narratives that present us with deep and abiding love, a need for orienting oneself, for respecting the process of orientation. They also dwell in the instantaneous shifts, the sudden changes that simultaneously jar and reassure us. The dreamy realism of the work grounds. Readers are confronted with the unpredictable inertia of life wherein we are challenged daily to find comfort while constantly orienting ourselves. The messiness and complexities of life are often what can bring the greatest joys. There is nakedness, stripping down of pretense, and a love for the primal, emotionally driven self. Some favorite poems are "Liver of Sulfur," "whatever wilderness contained there," "Arrival: Troy, New York," and the final poem in the collection.

Review Quotes

Recommended by Library Journal

"The traumas of racial prejudice are met with poise and thoughtfulness, even humor, in Iain Haley Pollock's third collection, All the Possible Bodies. [Pollock] moves nimbly from Michael Jackson's lyrics to American lynchings, from quarterbacks to police brutality."
--Ron Charles, The Washington Post Book Club

"Pollock's poetry continues to grow alongside his life, each book reflecting the changes in his world and the world around him. Whether writing about race, fatherhood, or the shared landscapes of the Hudson Valley, his work captures the beauty and complexity of what it means to be human. In All the Possible Bodies, that honesty feels especially clear, a reminder that poetry can still help us see ourselves, and each other, with deeper understanding."
--Alexa Schwartzberg, River Journal

"Pollock calls each of our names, and in doing so, promises that that song will keep at bay whatever Clearances may loom, many though they are today. This great, big "us" of All the Possible Bodies guarantees that our own bodies--every single one of them--hold mysteries and powers enough to face, and to overcome, the ruin and the wrack."
--Joseph Byrd, Bear Review

"In weaving resilience from the delicate fabric of the existential questions permeating the lives of African American men, All the Possible Bodies shimmers with a brilliance that allows the light of honesty and courage to penetrate the dense mass existent in the swirling of race and caste in America. Pollock is a brave poet, gifted with a voice that is the way of articulating his own body and soul while delicately tending to what gives life to all of us."
--Afaa M. Weaver, author of A Fire in the Hills

"Iain Haley Pollock is a gifted storyteller and All the Possible Bodies is an unflinchingly honest portrait of a mixed-race Black man, a father and teacher in contemporary America. Fed by the past, pitched toward the future, Pollock's voice is one of abiding conscience. In deeply moving poems, he probes the ethical question, what it means to be good, and the existential one, what it is simply to be--scoring myths of the land and self we 'know by heart' and 'stumble through.'"
--Shara McCallum, author of No Ruined Stone

About the Author

Iain Haley Pollock is the author of three poetry collections, Spit Back a Boy (2011), Ghost, Like a Place (Alice James, 2018), and All the Possible Bodies (Alice James, 2025). His poems have appeared in publications ranging from American Poetry Review to The New York Times Magazine. Pollock has received several honors for his work including the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Poetry, the Bim Ramke Prize for Poetry from Denver Quarterly, and a nomination for an NAACP Image Award. He serves as Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Manhattanville University in Purchase, NY.