“Sometimes it’s hard to know a miracle / is a miracle.” Book of Miracles, Kelle Groom’s fifth poetry collection, is devoted to seeing the miraculous in the everyday. Through anaphora and elegy, ekphrastic poems, list poems, litanies, prayers, fevers, and visions, Groom seeks commonplace or hidden miracles. These poems are an exploration of mystery and longing. The speaker’s experience of alcoholism and recovery propels a desire for transformation. The natural world also opens to the miraculous. Other poems are whirls, almost dervish, in which the speaker transforms into something/someone else—another form, multiple selves, changeable states.
While exploring the idea that if one pays attention, the unseen will reveal itself, the speaker is keenly aware of the time she lives in and the great human suffering which many in power dismiss and hide. The speaker trusts her own eyes, and the power of seeing. Throughout Book of Miracles, these poems are invitations to see the miracles around us and in ourselves.

96 Pages, 6 x 9 in.

March, 2027

isbn : 9780822968740

about the author

Kelle Groom

Kelle Groom is the author of four poetry collections: Underwater City (University Press of Florida), Luckily, Five Kingdoms, and Spill (Anhinga Press); a memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster) a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, Library Journal Best Memoir; and How to Live: A Memoir-in-Essays (Tupelo Press). An NEA Literature Fellow, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, recipient of two Florida Book Awards in poetry, Groom’s work appears in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry. She served as nonfiction editor of AGNI Magazine and poetry editor of The Florida Review. Groom’s honors include fellowships from Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Library of Congress, Civitella Ranieri, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, James Merrill House, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ucross Foundation. Groom was previously Distinguished Writer-in-Residence and Assistant Professor of Humanities at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe, and director of programs at Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA.

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Kelle Groom