Shellback

<p>WINNER 2025 AMERICAN LEGACY BOOK AWARDS</p><p>AMERICANS FOR THE ARTS' FEATURED BOOK FOR NATIONAL POETRY MONTH 2023</p><p>KIRKUS BEST BOOKS OF 2021</p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Set against the brutal backdrop of war this is an emotionally perceptive poignant and thoughtfully nuanced examination of the father-daughter relationship. Courageous insightful and unsettling poems about war and family ties. -</span><strong style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Kirkus Reviews</strong></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>A not-untroubled tribute and a difficult elegy </span><em style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Shellback</em><span style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)> traces the attachment of a daughter to her father from her childhood days of trying to be his boy to the grown-up's task to be his caregiver in his last years. Including horrific details from the father's WWII Navy service in the Pacific which the poet memorializes in blunt terse lines alongside the harrowing specifics of his decline Osterman limns a portrait of a complex relationship. Marked by candor and clear-sightedness these poems resist soothing resolutions and easy solace which is why they are sure to ring true to readers. -</span><strong style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Jeanne Marie Beaumont</strong><span style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)> </span><em style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Letters from Limbo</em></p><p></p><p><em style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Shellback</em><span style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)> is an elegy for a man who taught his youngest daughter how to stretch a buck drive a truck / anchor a screw win at gin rummy. Jeanne-Marie Osterman toggles between nightmarish scenes her father witnessed during World War II and the smaller but no less affecting traumas of his final months in a nursing home. Her language is spare and colloquial with moments of irony and deadpan wit that illuminate every detail. The arduous work of losing and grieving is beautifully preserved in these poems which in their vividness function like a series of photographs. Or a time capsule. Or amber-something tough primordial and nearly clear. Osterman conveys impeccably and with unflappable grace the hard-earned knowledge that no one is only / their sins. -</span><strong style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Mark Bibbins</strong><span style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)> </span><em style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>13th Balloon</em></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>The beautifully sequenced poems in Jeanne-Marie Osterman's </span><em style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Shellback</em><span style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)> yield a searing portrait of the poet's father as a Depression-era boy and a Navy World War II veteran given to emotional coldness and barely repressed anger. Their poignancy resides in the poet's filial devotion her wish to understand him and care for him in his old age. As Osterman writes in Forgive: I let memories I can't erase / rest in peace / knowing no one is only their sins. With often haunting imagery and carefully clipped lines she memorably portrays a man his era and a daughter's unstinting love. -</span><strong style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Gardner McFall</strong><span style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)> </span><em style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>On the Line</em></p><p></p><p><em style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Shellback</em><span style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)> is a beautiful tribute to Osterman's father and to memory itself. -</span><strong style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Maggie Smith</strong><span style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)> </span><em style=color: rgba(26 59 77 1)>Good Bones</em></p><p></p><p></p>