How to Drown a Boy

"How to Drown a Boy, a debut collection of poems by J. Bruce Fuller, investigates how boyhood and fatherhood entwine to create cycles that mimic a decaying and dangerous natural environment. The woods, the water, the oil rigs, and the men who work them, all have a powerful effect on the speaker from childhood through adulthood. These poems examine the weight of family and culture against a backdrop of climate change and natural disaster. Expectation, tradition, poverty, violence, and toxic masculinity all combine to shape the speaker, who must reconcile these forces in adulthood. Fuller's searing poems explore the pressures inherited from birth and how they shape a life, set amid the backyards, backwoods, and bayous of Louisiana. Ultimately, How to Drown a Boy is a book of understanding and forgiveness. For the land, and the labor. For the father, and for the boy who must become him. For what is passed down to us, and what we pass on"--