When You Read a Novel the Dead Would Like

Benjamin S Grossberg author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:CavanKerry Press

Publishing:6th Oct '26

£15.00

This title is due to be published on 6th October, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

When You Read a Novel the Dead Would Like cover

From distinguished poet Benjamin S. Grossberg comes a bracing exploration of how the fear of death softens into acceptance. 

Benjamin S. Grossberg’s When You Read a Novel the Dead Would Like is about how we come to understand death—sometimes in terror, sometimes in loss, and perhaps, in the sober assessments of middle age, with calm acceptance, when what may have loomed as a nightmare can come to seem unremarkable, familiar, even a “private wonder.” The poems span the trauma of coming out as a gay man at the height of the US AIDS epidemic to the advent of PrEP—a class of HIV-prevention drugs—twenty-five years later. The poems wrestle with the growing awareness that, though one bugbear may press less close, death still waits, patient and inevitable. A series of elegies for the poet’s mother, who returns as a wry, irreverent ghost “swirling/ice cubes in a tumbler of vodka,” lies at the heart of this ranging, cinematic collection.

“In his latest volume, fiction and poetry Lambda Literary Award winner Grossberg blends whip-smart storytelling and an alert, ‘Alex in Wonderland’ attention to revealing everyday and natural details. In tackling, with unfailing frankness and apt humor at times demanding subjects, such as queer loneliness, the AIDS pandemic, Jewish legacy, and a mother’s death, he proves himself a resourceful literary athlete with a marathon runner’s all-systems-go air of dedication. Rooted in free-flowing compassion, relatable suffering, and resilient love, it’s hard to imagine a more dynamic, compelling, and deeply alive book of poems than When You Read a Novel the Dead Would Like.”

-- Cyrus Cassells, 2021 Texas Poet Laureate and author of Lorca to the Umpteenth Power

“Both haunted and haunting, Grossberg’s new book conjures the ghosts of middle-age. These are poems of memory and mortality—a man looking back at boyhood sexuality, the specter of AIDS, a mother’s dying. With a poet’s ear for subtle music and a storyteller’s instinct for heartrending detail, Grossberg explores the essence of loss and love. This is a powerful new volume from one of our essential poets.”

-- Bruce Snider, author of Blood Har

ISBN: 9781960327215

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 454g

96 pages