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Book Title

Hold Everything

Subtitle
Poems
Author 1
Dobby Gibson
Poem Excerpt
I wanted to know my role
In the story as winter dozed
through its frozen symposium
I was hoping to find
a better word for how it felt
to be so uncertain
that also meant bathing oceanside
each book was another decision
to learn to live with
when I reached for the oldest ones
they said one day you will know
what it means to be alone
—From “The Little Prince”
Body
In his latest collection, Dobby Gibson explores the strangeness of the everyday with fresh urgency, inviting us to reawaken and reclaim our fuller selves. Hold Everything moves at the speed of breaking news as it makes a plea for grace in a world running short on mercy. Its epistolary poems put us in correspondence with Edo-period poets and 1980s hair-metal gods, artificial intelligence and hotel soaps. Gibson’s poems remain on alert, demonstrating the many ways a deeper attention to the marvels and horrors of the contemporary world can form a kind of civil disobedience.
 
Hold Everything gathers up the harbingers of our turbulent world as it reaches for hope and evinces wonder.

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List Price
$17.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-64445-309-4
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
88
Trim Size
Trim Size
6 x 9
Keynote
A beloved poet captures the beauty that attention to the public and private offers

About the Author

Dobby  Gibson
Credit: Photographer Credit / Zoe Prinds-Flash
Dobby Gibson is the author of Polar; Skirmish; It Becomes You, a finalist for the Believer Poetry Award; and Little Glass Planet. His poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, the Paris Review, and Ploughshares. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.


http://dobbygibson.com/
More by author

Upcoming Events

Dobby Gibson reading and in conversation with Alan Felsenthal about HOLD EVERYTHING at P&T Knitwear

Date:
Location:
P&T Knitwear Books and Podcasts in New York, NYview map
Tickets for this event are available for purchase. Copies of HOLD EVERYTHING are available for purchase from P&T Knitwear.

Dobby Gibson reading and in conversation with Matthew Rohrer about HOLD EVERYTHING at Unnameable Books

Date:
Location:
Unnameable Books (Turners Falls) in Turners Falls, MAview map
This event is free and open to the public. Click here for more details

Dobby Gibson reading and in conversation with Matthew Rohrer about HOLD EVERYTHING at Antidote Books

Date:
Location:
Antidote Books in Brattleboro, VTview map
This event is free and open to the public. Click here for more details.

Praise

  • “Gibson's a poet I never tire of hearing: the more of his work I read the more I want to read. . . . On the one hand, it's sad, as sad as life. On the other, it's not, and thank Gibson for it. He could even be the voice of my generation, if my generation had a beautiful voice.” —Stephanie Burt
  • “Every poem in this book tells me something I don’t know, or something I’m always in need of being reminded. . . . Gibson’s Hold Everything shows us what it might mean if only we could hold everything we need to survive, love, and thrive. I love this book.” —Dara Barrois/Dixon
  • “There’s grieving in this book and there’s no nonsense nonsense and always feral melancholy and always another chance. It’s a book that forgives us our folly and shows us the many meanings there are when someone says poetry saves lives.” –Dara Barrois/Dixon
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