Shame | Shame

Winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize Devin Becker’s Poulin Prize-winning collection investigates two types of shame: that which disgraces, and that which curbs and keeps. Set in the mundane everyday where lives maneuver around other lives, conversations are clumsy, and a co-worker is the only one without a party invite, these confessional, narrative poems humorously dramatize the socially awkward moments of life. “Data (ll)” Plural like dustnot mooselike heatnot thunderNot on, in, above,or underOfAlreadyTrace and tracerFlesh madeflesh made fleshWordEraser Praise for Shame | Shame “Devin Becker’s Shame | Shame is a brilliant debut collection. Here, the prose poem has been re-imagined as a cinematic vignette, yet rooted as deeply in the American Northwest as anything in Richard Hugo and David Lynch. Raw, intimate, and elliptical in its metaphysics, Devin Becker’s poetry captures an idiomatic recklessness while navigating those angular narratives of our contemporary lives.”—David St