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Book Cover for: The Second O of Sorrow, Sean Thomas Dougherty

The Second O of Sorrow

Sean Thomas Dougherty

Reader Score

84%

84% of readers

recommend this book

Critic Reviews

Great

Based on 5 reviews on

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Winner of the 2019 Paterson Poetry Prize
Winner of the 2019 Housatonic Book Award for Poetry

Sean Thomas Dougherty celebrates the struggles, the dignity, and the joys of working-class life in the Rust Belt. Finding delight in everyday moments--a night at a packed karaoke bar, a father and daughter planting a garden, a biography of LeBron James as a metaphor for Ohio--these poems take pride in the people who survive despite all odds, who keep going without any concern for glory, fighting with wit and grace for justice, for joy, every god damned day.

Book Details

  • Publisher: BOA Editions
  • Publish Date: Apr 10th, 2018
  • Pages: 104
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.80in - 6.00in - 0.30in - 0.25lb
  • EAN: 9781942683551
  • Categories: American - GeneralLabor & Industrial RelationsSubjects & Themes - Family

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About the Author

Dougherty, Sean Thomas: - Publisher's Weekly describes Sean Thomas Dougherty as "A blue-collar, Rust Belt romantic to his generous, enthusiastic core," and Dorianne Laux praises him as "the gypsy punk heart of American poetry." He is the author or editor of fifteen books including All You Ask for is Longing: Poems 1994-2014 (Boa Editions), and Double Kiss: Stories, Poems, Essays on the Art of Billiards (Mammoth Books 2017). His awards include a Fulbright Lectureship to the Balkans, and an appearance in Best American Poetry. Known for his dynamic readings, he has performed at hundreds of venues, universities and festivals including the Dodge Poetry Festival, the Old Dominion Literary Festival and across Albania and Macedonia where he appeared on national television, sponsored by the US State Department. He works as a Med Tech and Caregiver for people with brain injuries. He lives in Erie, PA.

More books by Sean Thomas Dougherty

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Book Cover for: All My People Are Elegies: Essays, Prose Poems and Other Epistolary Oddities, Sean Thomas Dougherty
Book Cover for: Broken Hallelujahs, Sean Thomas Dougherty
Book Cover for: Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line, Sean Thomas Dougherty
Book Cover for: All You Ask for Is Longing: New and Selected Poems: New and Selected Poems, Sean Thomas Dougherty
Book Cover for: Cutthroat, a Journal of the Arts, Tr Hummer

Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

"A blue-collar, Rust Belt romantic to his generous, enthusiastic core, Dougherty has filled eight prior volumes with character sketches, pool hall odes (he now works in a pool hall), vaunting declarations, outcries, celebrations, protests, and promises, 'in the rusting cities in the rusting places where we leaned against the wall, in the smoky haze of bar smoke and breath.'" -Publisher's Weekly
"Sean Thomas Dougherty's poems vibrate with 'red and blue braids of light', in a voice that resonates and transports. Arresting, precise imagery from a poet of grand and memorable vision, this is the gypsy punk heart of American poetry." --Dorianne Laux
"Sean Thomas Dougherty's poems are singing knives that cut your heart so that it beats again!" --Phil Metres
"Every poem Sean Thomas Dougherty writes is holy, a psalm for the damned." --Sheryl St. Germain