New & Selected Poems
Orpheus
Orpheus
Remains
Thirty years of demons that still haunt, and angels who keep lifting him out of the dark — sung back to life, one confession at a time.
Find your copy ↓
Thirty years of demons that still haunt, and angels who keep lifting him out of the dark — sung back to life, one confession at a time.
Find your copy ↓
The seminal collection from Pulitzer-nominated poet Clifford Brooks
“Clifford Brooks writes passionate, eloquent poetry, as wide-ranging as the models he sometimes invokes, including the blues and the epics.”Robert PinskyFormer Poet Laureate of the United States
“A wild, unruly love anchors the poems in Clifford Brooks’s Orpheus Remains — the kind that makes the blues an essential art of ventilation and renewal, his lines widening out to all the strong-hearted, all the soothsayers, staggering ‘bloodshot on moon-hung highways’ mouthing his words, charmed back to life.”Major JacksonGertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities, Vanderbilt University
Orpheus Remains: New and Selected Poems gathers work from Clifford Brooks’s previous collections — The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics, Athena Departs, and Old Gods — alongside new poems, in pursuit of confessing his full truth. Vividly reliving more than thirty years of demons that still haunt, and angels who continue to lift him out of darkness, these poems trace not only personal growth but the evolution of his craft.
Every poem is a literal translation of what has been loved, lost, gained, relinquished — and graced by the spaces in between where God prevails. New poems find Brooks standing firmly in the present, accepting that he alone allowed addiction and insecurities born of autism to obscure his peace. Laying old ghosts aside, these fresh verses reveal a soul on the path to self-acceptance, holding fast to his Southern roots even as they travel far from home.
$22.00 · paperback · 244 pages · Mercer University Press
Clifford Brooks is a poet, author, educator, and broadcaster, and founder of The Southern Collective Experience, a cooperative of writers, musicians, and visual artists. He is editor of The Blue Mountain Review and host of Dante’s New South.