The first-ever poetry book set on a llama farm, Daniel Lassell’s debut collection, Spit, examines the roles we play in the act of belonging. It is a portrait of a boy living on a farm populated with chickens sung to sleep by lullaby, captive wolves next door that attack a child, and a herd of llamas learning to survive despite coyotes and a chaotic family. The collection in part explores the role of the body in health and illness and one’s treatment of the earth and others. A theme of spirituality also weaves throughout the collection as the speaker treks into adulthood, yearning for peace amid the decline of his parents’ marriage. Driven by a “wish to visit / some landless landscape,” the speaker eventually leaves his family’s farm, only to find that return is impossible. After losing the farm and the llama herd to his parents’ divorce, the speaker wrestles with the role of presence as it relates to healing, remarking, “I wish enough, / to have only // these memories I have.” Unflinching at every turn, the collection pushes the boundaries of “home” to arrive upon new meaning, definition, and purpose.
Table of Contents:
Contents I. The Llama Named James and John Sons of Thunder Laws of Motion The Wolves Next Door The Lives of Chickens Cheers The Leaning Barn An Account of a Llama’s Death Sinkhole Tasting Moonshine Spit II. Mom Woke to a Coyote Staring in Her Window Myself, a Barbed Wire Blood Lungs How to Pet a Llama Taking in the Stray Taking Care Lyme Silent Treatment On the Fellowship of Rabies Climates Bottom Land It’s No Good Brush Fire At the Storm Cellar III. The Afterlife Tussle Leaving the Farm Portrait of Truth as a Satisfied Belly Evolution Chart Everywhere the Salt The Way Home IV. Breakage Inadequate Prayers Final Visit Nothing is Clean in the Country Monochromatic Untethering End of the Llamas The Light and Where It Lives Finishing the Harvest The Lesser Distances Notes Acknowledgments
About the Author :
DANIEL LASSELL is the author of Ad Spot, a limited edition chapbook. His poems have been published in the Colorado Review, Southern Humanities Review, Puerto del Sol, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. He grew up in Kentucky, where he raised llamas and alpacas. He now lives in Colorado with his wife and children.
Review :
2021 Reader Views Gold Award—Poetry
2021 Reader Views The Inside Scoop Live Award for the Most Innovative Book of Poetry
2022 Eric Hoffer Book Award, Honorable Mention in Home
2021 Finalist, American Book Fest: Best Book Awards, Poetry
2021 Finalist: 2021 American Writing Awards, Poetry
— Reader Views
