Nocturama - by Will Brewer (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A dazzling second collection from "an immensely gifted poet" (Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine).

Spanning Appalachia to California, Will Brewer's new poems attempt to make sense of some of life's darkest turns: a father's bout with leukemia, the slog of mental illness, a friend's early death, and the rise of environmental catastrophes in the West.

Yet despite these difficult moments, strands of light emerge: the smell of an orange on a plane, the starburst of a car hitting a power line, a citrus tree in California sun. Mysterious hair loss prompts dermatologist visits and reveals "how dignified it felt / to be looked at like that, to be read, / a record of past exposures / becoming a map to possible futures." It is the type of knowing in which "knowing nothing for sure feels like a special kind of freedom." Over time, a seemingly endless night gives way and an aubade opens to a new possibility: love.

The second book of poems from this rising and lauded author, Nocturama offers a presence of mind and spirit that notices the mysterious, even in the wake of disaster.

Review Quotes

"Will Brewer's Nocturama is an exceptional book, a tremendously intense document of witness and work. These poems go deep in their interrogation of bodies and screens, love and lineage, illness and vice, the aftereffects of war, and the contemporary onslaught of image. Brewer navigates overlapping planes of time and space with litheness, gravity, and essential insight."--Natalie Shapero, author of Stay Dead

"Though there is sickness at the edges, strife, and the panic and frenzy of the unsettled mind, images are so precisely rendered in Will Brewer's Nocturama that you almost believe in the impossible beauty of the world. 'We stepped toward each other, ' he writes, 'like two people folding a bedsheet.' It's a world he makes fragrant, fills with the sometimes numbing, sometimes deepening sensations of drugs, food, and love. These perfect poems, refined against the encroachments of night, give us something exquisite and indelible to live for."--Richie Hofmann, author of The Bronze Arms

"The simplicity and charm of this book cannot hide its greatness. For me, Will Brewer's Nocturama calls to mind Robert Frost, whose America was as lonely, bewildered, and grieving. I praise these dignified, melancholic poems for their unblinking vision of darkness and for their largeness of impulse. From a deep river of tears comes this intense, ranging, triumphant book."--Henri Cole, author of Gravity and Center

About the Author

Will Brewer's first book of poems, I Know Your Kind, was a winner of the National Poetry Series. His debut novel, The Red Arrow, was published by Knopf in 2022 and received the Silver Medal for First Fiction from the California Book Awards. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Review, The Nation, and The Sewanee Review. Formerly a Stegner Fellow, he's now a Jones Lecturer at Stanford. He lives in Oakland.