Blue Colonial (APR Honickman 1st Book Prize)

“David Roderick's poems are exquisitely made with language that is rich and precise. . . . He convinces us that we are all pilgrims committing our acts of courage as well as our little crimes. This book is immensely rewarding.”—James Tate

In Blue Colonial, David Roderick memorializes his hometown by excavating and re-imagining its individual and collective histories. Set in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where English colonists first settled in 1620, Blue Colonial uses dramatic and narrative effects to explore the burdens of historical inheritance: vanished Native American tribes, the seeds of American culture, and our physical and psychological encroachment upon the natural landscape.

Whether he is writing about historical legacy or his own backyard, Roderick has arrived at a voice of distinct solitariness and precise observation. With passion and sly wit, he has composed a strangely luminous book, a poetry collection that resonates with gravity, fine music, and a deep regard for the task of being human in the world. With an introduction by Robert Pinsky.

David Roderick has published poems in many leading literary magazines. He earned an M.F.A. at the University of Massachusetts and spent two years as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. He lives and teaches in San Francisco.