Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions

This year’s winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Maurice Manning’s Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions. These compelling poems take us on a wild ride through the life of a man child in the rural South. Presenting a cast of allegorical and symbolic, yet very real, characters, the poems have “authority, daring, [and] a language of color and sure movement,” says series judge W.S. Merwin.From Seven ChimerasThe way Booth makes a love story:same as a regular story, exceptunder one rock is a trapdoor that leadsto a room full of belly buttons;each must be pushed, one is a landmine.The way Booth makes hope:thirty-seven acres, Black Damon,Red Dog. Construct a pillar of firein the Great Field and let it becomeunquenchable.The way Booth ends the Jack-in-the-Box charade:shoot the weasel in the neckand toss it to the buzzards.The way Booth thinks of salvation:God holding a broken abacus,colored beads falling away.