“Bobby Elliott’s The Same Man confronts the subject of fatherhood with an honesty and tenderness rarely accorded to the typical secondary parent. In these poems, we see a pair of imperfect men reach toward each other and, indeed, toward the work of both fathering and being fathered. These are the kinds of poems that truly ring of a journey toward healing and forgiveness—but not the saccharine healing we see in media that demands succinct, neat endings. These poems sing of real human healing, which is a messed up and often incomplete process, but is perhaps the holiest one we can submit to in our lives. Elliott is a bard of the familial experience. These are poems to hold tight.” —Nate Marshall, author of Finna and judge of the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize

“The Same Man is a tender meditation on love, memory, and the ghosts that shape us.”—Tina Chang, author of Hybrida  

“Bobby Elliott’s The Same Man is a slim miracle, a book that transcends its classical subject—a son reckoning with his father, the son becoming a father himself—through what I can only call a kind of genius.” —Edgar Kunz, author of Fixer 

“How to survive and then spin such daunting material into lyric narratives delicate as a silk thread, yet tensile and strong as a vibrating steel string bestowing a haunted, haunting music? How to map such landscapes of hope, despair, love and risk? Somehow Bobby Elliott has done just that with rare grace in this lovely debut.” —Gregory Orr, author of Selected Books of the Beloved 

• National print and online review attention 
• Print and online features 
• Select author appearances 
• Social media outreach 
• Online promotion 
• Feature at AWP 2026