Wolves in Shells - (Backwaters Prize in Poetry) by Kimberly Ann Priest (Paperback)

About the Book

Wolves in Shells is a modern monomyth telling the story of a woman navigating homelessness, trauma, and memories as she attempts to leave a violent partner.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry

Wolves in Shells is a modern monomyth telling the story of a woman navigating homelessness, trauma, and memories as she attempts to leave a violent partner. Reflecting on her familial heritage, this survivor grapples with the way she, the women of her history, and her daughter have been conditioned to accommodate the demands of the male ego and predation. Reflective, clear-eyed, and incisive, the poems of Wolves in Shells feature O-Six, a wolf born into the rewilding territory of Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s who serves as a metaphor for women who must cope with violence and survive on their own. Drawing from Gaston Bachelard's quote "wolves in shells are crueler than stray ones," the narrative considers how survival requires a balance of protectiveness, risk, trust, and escape.

Review Quotes

"Wolves in Shells by Kimberly Ann Priest is a piercing rebuke of 'our dependency on machinery/ that harms us.' That machinery is patriarchy, marriage, and gender inequality. A blistering chronicle of a life lost--children, home, health--and regained. Muriel Rukeyser asked, 'What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?/ The world would split open.' Each of these poems moves with the honesty of an ax."--Tomás Q. Morín, author of Let Me Count the Ways: A Memoir

"Wolves in Shells is a powerful collection that details what it means to be a woman in the twenty-first century. In it, Kimberly Ann Priest documents a life of resilience after homelessness, abuse, intergenerational trauma, and witnessing the violence of America. Drawing from her cross-country travels and emotional connections to wildlife--particularly the wolves of Yellowstone National Park--Priest illustrates, in captivating detail, the strength of an individual woman who is both hunted and too often harmed, but who ultimately 'become[s] her own pack' to 'survive.'"--Sunni Brown Wilkinson, author of Rodeo, winner of the 2024 Donald Justice Poetry Prize

"In the first poem, Kimberly Ann Priest evokes a moment of 'dismantled vigilance--nothing encroaching, nothing to hunt, ' and this becomes the quest of these stunning poems as the speaker moves through the effects of abuse and homelessness into a world free of predation. The voice in this book is strong, astute, and vulnerable as the poet reclaims her history and its fragmented beauty alongside the story of a wolf, her totem creature. Priest writes with a keen eye and great musical dexterity, creating a book that is both compelling and crucial."--Betsy Sholl, Maine poet laureate emeritus and author of As If a Song Could Save You

"Of wolves and shells, holy howls and spirals, does Kimberly Ann Priest weave her sacred tapestry of lyrical outpouring; in one poem she writes 'because I feel like thunder often, dance like snow; because I am living.' And her poems are so fiercely alive and soaring and plunging on the page that it both hurts and fills one up to read them. Hers is a startling new voice in American poetry that can never be forgotten."--Robert Vivian, author of All I Feel Is Rivers

About the Author

Kimberly Ann Priest is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University. She is the author of the poetry books Slaughter the One Bird and tether and lung.