Wrong [Paperback]

The poems of Reginald Shepherds third book move among, mix, and manufacture stories, seeking to redefine the meaning of mythology. From the ruined representatives of Greek divinity (broken statues and fragmented stories), and the dazzling extravagances of predecessors like Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens, to the fleeting promises of popular music and the laconic demigods of the contemporary gay subculture, they sketch maps of a world in which desire may find a restless home. But desire leads the maps astray and maps mislead desire. The poems poems both enact languages powers to create a world and enforce the worlds insistence (material, social, sexual, racial, historical) that mind (and body) surrender to circumstance. The struggle between these two halves that will never make a whole produces new myths of occasion, packing the rifts/with sleeplessness, filling the gaps with lack. In that space between promise and deprivation,Wrongbuilds its song.

The poems of Shepherds third book seek to redefine the meaning of mythology, from the ruined representatives of Greek divinity to the dazzling extravagances of predecessors like Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens.

These poems tread between subtle forms and raw power, never compromising but holding the two together in a difficult tension.  Wrong continues the work of Shepard’s previous two books, the AWP prize -winningSome Are Drowning, andAngel, Interrupted, but it pushes the possibilities of a constricting and potentially poisonous history even further toward the margin of liberation.  These poems are never still, always ravished by the mouth of the moment, until they almost stand in a body that is somehow dying and surving at the same time.
--Indiana Review

“Shepherd's third book differs from the others in its close attention to the impulses toward aggression inherent in desire. . . . Shepherd struggles particularly with his search flS.