The Ghosts of Lost Animals

Selected by Lee Herrick as the winner of the 2018 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize, The Ghosts of Lost Animals is the first full-length book by Michelle Bonczek Evory.

In her wonderful new collection The Ghosts of Lost Animals, Michelle Bonczek Evory weaves magic with sensuality, intelligence with animal hunger, cynicism with wonder. Her work will remind you of the work of many other poets, and also of nobody else.  When I first started reading these poems, I thought: love child of Russell Edson and Kim Addonizio, but then that didn’t seem quite right.  The book seems to miraculously teeter between the passion that drives these poems and the discerning critical eye that keeps them tethered to the page. Reading this book is like eating a multi-course meal where each bite surprises, delights and satisfies.

—Beth Gylys