Afterlight

Caleb Nolen’s poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Bat City Review, Fence, The Georgia Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Virginia and has received support from Blue Mountain Center and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

“The experience of reading Afterlight was a rare one for me. I couldn’t stop turning the pages. It is a propulsive, almost primal read; grief, longing, sorrow, and sympathy swelled inside me, bursts of feeling I did not expect and could not control.”—Jennifer T. Chang, from the foreword “These spare, unadorned poems open in the fissures of memory. Childhood and adolescence in particular are explored via emotional snapshots that are both tough and immensely tender. One of the most remarkable things about this poet is an absolute clarity that transcends the literal, which gives him big range and authority. The book is wholly original in that the poems travel all the way back to the origins of what they confront, including brilliant forays into matters of religion and the subtle underlying violence of a rough childhood. More than a few of these poems moved me deeply. This is the strongest first book I’ve read in a very long time.”—Chase Twichell, author of Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been"Caleb Nolen’s Afterlight chronicles a harrowing adolescence, reviewed retrospectively in the light of a faith that illuminates but will neither explain nor assuage. Rarely do I encounter poems written with such styptic care. Suspended between exorcism and elegy, each of these poems is a razor held in a living hand, waiting for the what-comes-next but already caught in the what-comes-after."—G.C. Waldrep, author of The Opening Ritual "The poems in Afterlight ask to be read in one sitting, to become immersed in the world that Caleb Nolen has (re)created. The poems circle around a handful of characters, some from Nolen's childhood, some from the Bible, and what is amazing is how each speaks to the other across time, how a dead friend can become Mark, how the speaker can become Judas. I am reminded of Larry Levis, of Richard Siken, in the way Nolen can narrate a life—grounding us in the mundane while reaching toward the sublime. The tension of revisiting those days ('those aisles of comedy and horror') shimmers from every page. These poems have the power of transformation built into them, always aware of the awful responsibility that invokes."—Nick Flynn, author of Low

• ReunionI.BlackoutLetter to CainReprieveLetter to AbelJohn's ParentsLetter to Mary of OigniesFirst GunMondegreenII.Late VigilHomecomingMolotovBlack FridayWaking DreamLast RitesOdeOpen WaterAfterlightLetter to JobThe DealIII.Jonah YearsKilling the Fattened CalfWorking OutStudy HourLetter to the Woman Taken in AdulteryUpdated Portrait in a Grocery StoreLetter to Paul the ApostleNight Drives on PA-26Letter to BobbyMondegreenLetter to JudasReprieveListenLetter to the Man Possessed by DemonsAppendix: HagiographiesNotesAcknowledgments