Mark Lilley's Lucky Boy is filled with hints of unsettledness: bus tickets, a storm front, a rootless father, any number of nervously-smoked cigarettes. In cars, vans, pickups, and big rigs, characters seem almost continually on the move. What remains in place, however, is the poet-his unwavering allegiance to memory and attention, as if the poems are a response to Lowell's question "Yet why not say what happened?" In a plain style that is deceptively simple, Lilley chooses just the right word or concrete detail, creates subtle sonic echoes, and leaps suddenly, briefly, into startling metaphors, so these clear-eyed poems are an expression, finally, of something deep and nearly unnameable-some sense that, whatever our afflictions and yearnings, it is still possible, and necessary, to love what we have been given. It is possible to consider ourselves lucky. We are lucky to have this beautiful, wise book.-Chris Forhan, author of My Father Before Me: A Memoir, Black Leapt In, The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars, and Forgive Us Our Happiness
Mark Lilley's debut collection, Lucky Boy, is a graceful and devastating volume, offered through the voice of a survivor. These poems narrate the struggles, dysfunctions and failures of an American family through fearless disclosures, exquisite language, and gentle ironies. I am deeply struck by this poet's unwavering eye and ear and narrative balance-his aesthetic depth and steadiness in the thick of these disastrous, broken characters and settings. Lilley's tonal control is heroic, given the traumatized interior of these narrations. Lilley's poems remind us that the poem comes bravely, urgently out of the seizure of human despair. It is their artistic and humane victory to transport us to these realms with compassionate insights, empathy and hard-earned tenderness. These poems take us on the impossible yet inevitable journey to personal reckoning. Mark Lilley's lovely and relentless poems answer our human failures with a quiet embrace, acceptance, and a loving ferocity. This is a book always to keep within reach.-George Eklund, author of Altar, Wanting To Be an Element, The Island Blade, and Each Breath I Cannot Hold
Enter the deeply emotional world of Mark Lilley's Lucky Boy and you will encounter people striving to escape the inescapable, whether their fates or their hearts. As these poems skillfully navigate the hard truths of poverty, alcoholism, and infidelity, they are punctuated by acts of kindness-from a