Leaving Troy

Navigating the landscapes and characters of his life through the lens of the mythical, Leaving Troy is the poet's attempt at reconciling contradictions in character, relationships, and conviction. These poems ground the reader in spaces most important to him: a family farm, a barrier island town, New York City, the shores of Troy. And we meet the accompanying characters: a grandfather, a brother, lovers-in the company of Diomedes, Agamemnon, and Helen-all with wisdom and warning for the poet's future. The reader is ferried along with the poet through the nostalgic varicosity of his relationship with space and place: trees are torn from the ground and the poet mourns, a little boy marvels over a subway map and the poet marvels with him, and in a vision from the past, his much-loved grandfather breaks horses with his brother on the family farm and the poet too is broken. Fostering meaning from of the images gifted to him, Leaving Troy is a coming-of-age story as much as it is a celebration of the wisdom purchased with suffering, and so through careful reading of the poet's curation of space, he hopes you will acquire that same wisdom born of beauty and grief.