A new novella collection from Broadstone Books (December 2021), considering the lives of poets and poetry.

“With sharp, beautiful concision, Tracy Daugherty’s new novellas, like the best of poetry, invite you into a labyrinth of human consciousness.  Here are the days and nights that poets actually live, where they encounter the experiences that make and mark the language of their poems . . . As with all his previous fiction, Daugherty gives you a generous understanding of the sublime qualities of his characters.”–David Biespiel.

“Has any American fiction writer ever written about the inner life of the poet more revealingly than Tracy Daugherty?  In the three novellas of Snow and Straw, Daugherty balances numerous angles of inquiry to render the contrariant impulses that give birth to high literary art . . . [His] achievement is to demonstrate how, for each of the authors in these stories, writing itself assumes a priestly function, granting temporary absolution so that the writer can go on in the world.”–Kevin Clark.

“How–and why–does one become a poet?  What of fate and desire compels a person to live so intimately, and often at great personal cost, with words?  In language both gorgeously lyrical and emotionally precise, Tracy Daugherty offers a stunning cache of poet-world surprises–homages and biographies, cameos and incarnations, maps of literary meccas, retellings of literary lore . . . and so much more.  Poets will recognize the life-and-times recounted here, but every reader will be taken in by the insights and revelations in these stunning novellas.”–Lia Purpura.

“A compelling voice drives each novella, they are supplely crafted, and the language very often leaps with vibrant, unapologizing heart . . . Daugherty convincingly evokes the lives of poets because he is one, writing in prose.”–John Daniel.