The Unnumbered Anniversaries: Poems (Paperback or Softback)

Every day is an anniversary of sorts, yet we choose to celebrate, memorialize, or mourn only a few. What about the other days of our lives, those that will never merit Silver, Gold, or Diamond, yet when added together-joy mingled with sorrow, heartbreak leavened by laughter-ultimately constitute this thing we call life? These are The Unnumbered Anniversaries Kurt Olsson seeks to commemorate within these unflinching poems and pages.

At heart, The Unnumbered Anniversaries is a testament to the ordinary, those fragments of time and place, of people and things, that distance and reflection somehow transform into the extraordinary. The empty soda can that doubled as an ashtray. The stray dog that shadowed you to school and back. The Willie Mays catch you made that summery afternoon....

Relatable. Affecting. Witty. And scrubbed of all pretension... The Unnumbered Anniversaries might well change your idea of not just what poetry is, but all that poetry can be. Indeed, this is not a collection to be read once and set aside with a pleasant nod or two, but rather an experience you will return to with cherished frequency. As Olsson observes in his slyly subversive penultimate entry, "At some point, you will thank God whether you believe or not." Amen!

Kurt Olsson has published two previous award-winning collections of poetry, Burning Down Disneyland (Gunpowder Press) and What Kills What Kills Us (Silverfish Review Press). His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and many other journals. Currently, he is pursuing a doctoral degree in English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.