Long Rules
An Essay in Verse
by Nathaniel Perry
Pub Date 01 Nov 2021 | Archive Date 31 Oct 2021
University of Nebraska Press, The Backwaters Press
Poetry


I am reviewing a copy of Long Rules through University of Nebraska Press, The Backwaters Press:



Long Rules is a book length poem divided into six sections. Long Rules takes readers to five Trappist monasteries in the southeastern United States to consider the intersections of solitude, family, music, and landscape. Its lines unspool in a loose and echoing blank verse that investigates monastic rules, sunlight, Saint Basil, turnips, Thomas Merton, saddle-backed caterpillars, John Prine, fatherhood, and everything in between.






Long Rules is about looking inside and outside the self, Perry asks, what, or whom, are we serving? Winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry, this essay in verse contemplates the meaning of solitude and its contemporary ramifications in a time of uncertainty.



I give Long Rules five out of five stars!



Happy Reading!