Paper Crown

First poetry collection in a decade from acclaimed author of The Crying Book

Since Heather Christle published her last poetry collection a decade ago, her nonfiction works The Crying Book and In the Rhododendrons have found her readers around the world. Paper Crown marks Christle's exuberant return to her home genre, in which she combines the imagination of her earliest poetry with the personal elements of her more recent prose. These poems conjure moments when the world's events (a child's words, early twentieth-century predictions of drone warfare, dinner with friends) align themselves with the odd logic of dreams and serendipity. With tenderness and verve, honesty and curiosity, Paper Crown invites readers to look up from its pages and recognize that the day going on around them could very well be its own poem.

[sample poem]

Mistake

For years I have seen

dead animals on the highway



and grieved for them

only to realize they are



not dead animals

they are t shirts



or bits of blown tire

and I have found



myself with this

excess of grief



I have made with

no object to let



it spill over and

I have not known



where to put it or

keep it and then today



I thought I know

I can give it to you