A Brief History of the Midwest

Andrew Grace is an expert in what I like to call Close Looking, a tender attentiveness to place, and the people who are the engine of a place, all of which springs to life in A Brief History Of The Midwest. This is a massively generous, incredibly transportative book.
— Hanif Abdurraqib

“I should have talked / to someone before now / and not you,” says one poem to the reader in Andrew Grace’s gorgeous new collection A Brief History of the Midwest. Grace writes with pith and precision, crafting poems of deep intellect and feeling that weave through crises of grief, crises of faith, the relationships between fathers and sons, the mythos of self-sufficiency, alcohol, wildlife, and rivers as rendered in literature and in life. “Poetry is not talking,” writes Grace, and his poems deliver on this proposition spectacularly, communicating with us in ways that compress, complicate, and far surpass ordinary exchange.
— Natalie Shapero

This stunning collection approaches a complex region of our current America with an original, unflinching eloquence. I returned to it more than once to marvel at the way the poet navigates, with rare musicality and subtle formal touch, the befuddling river of the Midwest, its “simple, unbearable stars”, its luminous grief.
— Chris Dombrowski