From Kingsley Tufts Award finalist Kathy Fagan comes Bad Hobby a perceptive collection focused on memory class and mighthavebeensIn a workingclass family that considers sensitivity a quotfatal diagnosisquot how does a child grow up to be a poet What happens when a body quotmeant to bend amp breedquot opts not to then finds itself performing the labor of care regardless Why do we think our quotcommon griefsquot so singular Bad Hobby is a hardearned meditation on questions like thesea dreamscape speckled with swans ghosts and weather updatesFagan writes with a kind of practical empathy lamenting pain and brutality while knowing also their inevitability A dementing father a squirrel limp in the talons of a hawk a quotchild who wont ever get bornquot with age Fagan posits the impact of ordeals like these changes Loss becomes instructive Solitude becomes a shared experience quotYou think your one life preciousquotAnd Bad Hobby thinkshard About lineage about caregiving About time It paces quotinside its head gazing skyward for a noun or phrase to shatter the glass of our locked cars amp save usquot And it does want to save us or at least lift us even in the face of immense bleakness...
