Embarrassments

Author: Graham Foust

Publishers: Flood Editions (2021)

For more than two decades Graham Foust has been sounding out the limits of common expression through precise lyricism, a tragicomic, almost slapstick absurdism, and syncopated guesses about what things might mean. Embarrassments offers a synthesis of that work. Running through the concerns of parenthood, climate change, and our inevitable insignificance is Foust's total commitment to excavating the strangeness of language and our entanglement with the words we share.

"Like Stevens, Foust writes intricate poems that explore a world from which meaning has departed; the poet seeks to restore it, however tentatively, through the powers of artifice."

–Ben Lerner