A Portrait of Energy

Aaron D. Wiegert's A Portrait of Energy pays close attention to the textures of Midwestern life, the specific weight of a father sharing a picture of his headstone on his phone, the half-dollar earned for a day's work taking garbage to the dump, the smell of laundry drifting up from a basement ping pong table. The book moves between rural childhood and urban adulthood, at home in both, where one might "escape from a wasp and be struck by a car" but also find love, passion, and "the clouds of family." Wiegert is a poet of accumulation and close observation, patient with the ordinary and unafraid of the dark corners where honest family memory collects. -John Gallaher, The Laurel Review"The poems in Aaron Wiegert's A Portrait of Energy are inventive, musical and authentic in their depictions of family ties across generations. They also offer vivid, cinematic glimpses into the age-old quests of finding self, love and purpose against a Midwestern backdrop. These poems celebrate the extraordinary and strange details of everyday existence, with language that is urgent and exciting-there are so many evocative, amazing examples of wordplay and storytelling here-gripping poems as alive in their wisdom as they are in their wonder." -Kevin Ridgeway, author of Death of the Coppertone Girl (Luchador Press)