{"product_id":"the-wonder-years-hardcover","title":"The Wonder Years - Hardcover","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eArian Katsimbras\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSummary: \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe West of \u003ci\u003eThe Wonder Years\u003c\/i\u003e is made of a series of smaller and smaller rooms. A mobile home swelling to split in late-August heat. Where storms stop short and abstain for generations. A field still burning at the edge of childhood. With materials unceasingly sharp and surprising, Arian Katsimbras creates a language of \"clean brutality.\" In these pages, the drought-wracked West decays into a coyote's rib bones, into an animal split into ribbons, into the long nightfall. Families are torn, a marriage cracks, relationships fail, but \" between \"the names for empty that will never fill,\" the magic here is the feat of existence amid so many disappearing acts. Though unflinching in their examination of grief, the poems in \u003ci\u003eThe Wonder Years\u003c\/i\u003e brim fiercely with unsentimental love. The relationship between a father and son becomes a riot against history--a promise to sever a cycle of paternal harm, to be a true light, even if just a single bare bulb, shining against the coming dark. \u003ci\u003eThe Wonder Years\u003c\/i\u003e is a closed loop of an interior American West that is unconcerned with escape, whether sanctioned or obsessively mapped, mythological or otherwise. It is a book about damage, sure, but more than that, it is about attention. About staying with the living.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Wonder Years\"\u003c\/i\u003e is a brilliant collection; a meditation on fatherhood, loss, and survival. These poems are dipped in Nevada's cities and\u003cbr\u003elandscapes, but it's Katsimbras' ability with language that elevates it: raw, ethereal, intimate, and ornate. What a find.\"\u003cbr\u003e- WILLY VLAUTIN, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Left and the Lucky \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Horse \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Hollyhocks, mobile homes, magpies and skies of brushfire smoke--Arian Katsimbras' \u003ci\u003eThe Wonder Years\u003c\/i\u003e burns and hurtles\u003cbr\u003edown the pocked streets and desert highways of the American West. 'Listen, ' the poet insists, 'we poor had something to say.' Indeed, you\u003cbr\u003eought to listen up. This is a book to read out loud, a book on fire--a book of grief and howling mouths and, too, of reckoning, of hard-\u003cbr\u003eearned hope and long-sought tenderness.\" \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e- JOE WILKINS, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Entire Sky\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ePastoral, 1994\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In Arian Katsimbras' \u003ci\u003eThe Wonder Years\u003c\/i\u003e, scars are touched, their heat felt, their pain gifted. They are sites of wounding and of reverence.\u003cbr\u003eThere is in these poems a wonder at the depths of pain--the brutality and abandonment suffered in the poet's youth--but also a wonder\u003cbr\u003eat the deep care Katsimbras bestows upon his son. We get the sense that as a father, the poet is learning to love twice--his own son and\u003cbr\u003ehimself. Equal parts visceral and tender, this collection excavates 'that familiar sound of grief 's keep, its needed maintenance, singing\u003cbr\u003ealong to its own tradition, ' and then breaks with it.\"\u003cbr\u003e- CAMERON MCGILL, author of \u003ci\u003eIn the Night Field\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"What to do with poems as elemental as these? Push them away from us or hold them close? Katsimbras chiseled these poems from\u003cbr\u003ethe high desert night and bleached bone, a world fashioned out of flash and recoil, and the violence of our fathers, and yet even as they\u003cbr\u003eglisten with our failures, they move toward redemption and a delicate mending--especially the poignant poems addressed to his son.\u003cbr\u003eKatsimbras knows something about the consummation of thievery and faith, and how if we gaze out into the broken fragments of the\u003cbr\u003eworld and pray hard enough, we can dust ourselves off, kiss our sons, and walk the long path we must travel to forgive ourselves.\"\u003cp\u003e- LINDSAY WILSON, author of\u003ci\u003e No Elegies \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Day Gives Us So Many Ways to Eat\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The sweep of \u003ci\u003eThe Wonder Years\u003c\/i\u003e is immense, from the spiritual\u003cbr\u003eendlessness of the desert to the hidden terrors of daily American\u003cbr\u003elife. The power, here, is that emotional tidiness and moral curation\u003cbr\u003eare exiled from these poems, that language is made to hold all things\u003cbr\u003eall at once. An arresting book of unruly contradictions and earned\u003cbr\u003etruths that are ultimately tempered by tenderness and love.\"\u003cbr\u003e- MICHAEL MCGRIFF, author of \u003ci\u003eInquest \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Angel Sharpening its Beak\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In these poems, shifting intimacies are tangible, deeply felt. Familial violence. Betrayal of self, others. The curative curiosity of a child.\u003cbr\u003eAnd fatherhood which magnifies love, which allows the speaker to reckon with the past, to live in the present. Arian Katsimbras is a\u003cbr\u003etremendously gifted poet who has written a remarkable and moving book. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e- EDUARDO CORRAL, author of \u003ci\u003eSlow Lightning \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eGuillotine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eARIAN KATSIMBRAS received his MFA from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He currently teaches at the University of Nevada, Reno.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 92\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.38 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e October 06, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56555612963121,"sku":"9781622882502","price":31.32,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1004\/9532\/7537\/files\/1vGGSnMT0t9781622882502.webp?v=1790761863","url":"https:\/\/mitchellofficial.com\/products\/the-wonder-years-hardcover","provider":"MITCHELL","version":"1.0","type":"link"}