Learning to Drown

<p><em>Learning to Drown</em> is that rare book of poems you read over and over again savoring its texture taste and cohesion. SM Stubbs delivers poems that are thrilling in their tone and form and exhilarating in their stunning metaphorical leaps yet remain tightly controlled accessible and thematically cohesive. He reminds us that 'history is how we're tethered to certain/stretches of land.' In poem after gripping poem he explores how our experience of the past-geographical ideological and personal-is essential and traumatic simultaneously. These are vigilant luminous necessary poems.</p><p>- Steve Bellin-Oka</p><p> author of <em>Instructions for Seeing a Ghost</em></p><p>Like a 'flame on a candle that won't quit' the poems in <em>Learning to Drown</em> shine an incandescent and intimate light upon memory childhood and survival in the aftermath of trauma. From barstools to backyards in late summer SM Stubbs brings his deeply perceptive and vulnerable observations to the most meaningful and devastating moments of his life. Told in unflinching detail these poems are a testament giving voice to the complicated journey from ruin to rebirth dazzling us with 'a beauty we have to tilt our heads to see.'</p><p>- Vandana Khanna</p><p> author of <em>Burning Like Her Own Planet</em> </p><p> and <em>Afternoon Masala</em></p><p></p>