Learning How to Drown

Learning How to Drown charts a vivid coming-of-age across the rural Midwest. The poems, rich in narrative texture and lyrical introspection, move through grain silos and third-shift factories, train trestles and back-porch folklore. Here, ordinary days tilt toward the mythic. Kerschbaum's speaker navigates small towns and night shifts, witnessing boys daring themselves into adulthood, families weathering hardship, and the stubborn ghosts of what refuses to burn. With tough tenderness and clear-eyed music, these poems turn detasseling cuts, Walmart parking lot midnights, and machine rooms into moments of reckoning. They examine how to love a place you also need to leave. Memory keeps scratching at the door. The poems ask how to swim past fear when the shore disappears. The result is a striking portrait of endurance and the luminous, fragile lives that refuse to be forgotten.

Joseph Kerschbaum is the author of ten poetry collections and two spoken word albums. His most recent books include Midnight Sunrise, Mirror Box, and Distant Shores of a Split Second. His work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Street Cake Magazine, The Dallas Review, Heimat Review, Wild Roof Journal, Trampoline, Hamilton Stone Review, and Reed Magazine. He has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Joseph lives in Bloomington, Indiana with his family, where he continues to write, perform, and support the literary arts.