Description

W. W. Norton, hardcover

Publication Date:June7, 2022

Publisher Marketing:An intimate, moving volume of poems on the anxieties and love of single fatherhood and domestic life.

Guided by acclaimed poet Matthew Dickmans deft and buoyant [intelligence] (Tracy K. Smith),Husbandryis a love song from a father to his children. Written after a separation and during overwhelming single-fatherhood in the early days of COVID-19 lockdowns,Husbandryrefuses romantic notions of parenting and embraces all its mess, anguish, joy, fear, boredom, warmth, and work. Dickman composes these poems entirely in vivid couplets that animate the various domestic pairs of broken-up parents, two sons, love and grief. With tender, aching clarity,Husbandryreveals the poets hunger to be a husband without ever being one, and his search for a father that ends with becoming one himself.