Leviathan - by Michael Shewmaker (Paperback)

About the Book

"Leviathan, the second book of poetry by Michael Shewmaker, offers an innovative reimagining of the Book of Job. Set in the embattled landscape of a modern East Texas, the poem unfolds in four cycles, each compounding the difficulties of a faith placed in a distant God. The book opens in Kilgore, Texas, as the protagonist, J-, wastes away in his bed from a mysterious illness. His three closest friends-Ellis, William, and Dalton-play the roles of the miserable comforters. The poem contains four cycles of interchanging monologues, bookended by a prologue and epilogue. Each cycle is separated by a "Fever Dream" that develops the backstory for the book's dramatic situation, particularly concerning J-'s wife, Callie. The final cycle concludes the poem with a series of monologues between J- and the Unnamable. Steeped in evocative language and theological questions, Leviathan shows a person of faith's attempt at reconciling the difference between the God of the New and Old Testaments, the God of grace and the God of law. It also comprises a complicated love song to the people and places of the author's home state of Texas. With an accomplished music wholly its own, Shewmaker's verse shifts effortlessly between song and story, unearthing beauty from the darkest depths of loss and doubt"--

Book Synopsis

Leviathan, the highly anticipated second collection by Michael Shewmaker, offers an innovative reimagining of the book of Job. Set in the landscape of modern East Texas, the poem unfolds in four cycles of interchanging monologues, each compounding the difficulties of a faith placed in a distant God. With an accomplished music wholly its own, Shewmaker's verse shifts effortlessly between song and story, unearthing beauty from the deep well of loss and doubt.

Review Quotes

"Leviathan is a retelling of Job in which the enduring story is made both painfully familiar and frighteningly strange, and so the poem strikes one as Job might have struck its first readers, which, it seems to me, is more than one can reasonably hope from any book."--Shane McCrae

"J. Joiner, a rich and successful oilman in Texas who has lived 'as right as a man can, ' has lost his family, his fortune, his health, and is surrounded by unsympathetic friends and the stench of his own failure. Sound familiar? Michael Shewmaker's Leviathan is the latest addition to the ancient genre exploring Job's suffering. What is new is that his Job's frame of reference ranges from the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov to the poetry of R. S. Thomas to the classic horror film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A scathing critique of the cost of survival, Leviathan takes its place among those works of literature that would dare plumb the depths of the divine will."--Mark Jarman

About the Author

Michael Shewmaker is the author of Penumbra, winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Stanford University, where he served as a Wallace Stegner Fellow. Born in Texarkana, Texas, he teaches creative writing at Stanford.