The Shape of Home by Lee Chilcote

In this wry, poignant collection of poems, Chilcote writes about the homes we’re shaped by as well as the homes we shape as adults. His poems are about finding your voice in the midst of struggle, taking the experiences of growing up in a place and creating something new out of the old, and nurturing a family, a marriage and a creative life in the aftermath of the recession.

This is the poet-as-father-homemaker-musician, who is late to parties, argues about the greatest guitarist of all time, and is left awestruck at the sight of his own father because “Protestants have fathers who / only appear at night.” If the Midwest has a certain tone of voice and subject — as a place that is somehow always the present abruptly set amid the rusty ruins of the past — then this is what Chilcote captures so triumphantly against the din of music, the cloud of booze, the scramble of children, and the presence of Love, who, as in his poem “Caveat Emptor,” is “the architect who shrugs his shoulders.” A delightful, intimate, and thoroughly noteworthy debut.

–Brad Ricca, author of American Mastodon, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award

Lee Chilcote is not interested in a vapid beauty that smooths over invisible barriers and difficult loves. The clamor of the world makes itself heard in his poems. His “muses are sirens, trains, barking dogs.” The Shape of Home curves lovingly around children that spring up “like sunflowers,” but these poems report as well on the black thread that runs through desires and dreams.

–Susan Grimm, author of Roughed Up by the Sun’s Mothering Tongue and other books

The Shape of a Home is a debut collection of poems that are as refreshingly honest as they are tender, witty, and compassionate. Lee Chilcote is clearly a welcome new voice to American poetry.

–Nin Andrews, author of Why God Is a Woman and other books