What Turtle Blood Tastes Like by Jonas Lamb

In this tender collection, Jonas Lamb draws us a map — of fatherhood and family, of the natural world and the human-made one, of region and nation — and then proceeds to explore the far edges of that map. Most of our lives happen there, in the unanticipated spaces beyond borders, the places where we have no guide to lead us. “We’re making the world,” Lamb writes. This is work we’ll never finish, but these poems offer solace and plenty of wise counsel: “You have to start small, / close to home. Then you can handle the rest of it.”

–Amorak Huey, author of Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy

In What Turtle Blood Tastes Like, Jonas Lamb resists the urge to simplify fatherhood, landscape, or ancestry. Many of these poems start out warm and firelit, only to expose the damp and peaty world beneath. Exploring the connections formed with family and place, Lamb doesn’t shy away from the difficulties of being a parent, being a son, being a homeowner. In poems filled with the concrete details of a life well-examined, he brings us along as he navigates what is precious, complicated, and transitory.

–Erin Coughlin Hollowell, author of Corvus and Crater and Every Atom

Lamb’s debut, What Turtle Blood Tastes Like, is so infused with the lyrical sensations of the domestic, of ancestry, of fatherhood and interaction with the land, that while reading, one gets the feeling this collection might sprout wings and fly away. With each poem more stunning than the last, Lamb proves himself to be a master poet and storyteller.

–Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, author of Witch of Wild Things and Dirt and Honey.

After my first reading, I went back over the collection to return to my favorites. I was surprised to see that the poem from which the collection takes its name is only nine stanzas long. This is a credit to the author, who conveys so much in such little space, a sentiment echoed in many of the poems that follow. The lasting images and emotions (on nature, religion, parenting, even softball) conveyed in these poems extend much further than the space on the page in which the words appear. There is so much unflinching truth (see: “Before You Ask”) and beauty (see “Dirt Work”) and heart (see: “Kaldūnai”) that these poems beg to be read again and again.

–Judge’s Notes, Jason Wenger Award for Literary Excellence (2018)