The Self-Styled No-Child

by Cody Walker

The Self-Styled No-Child, Cody Walker's second book of poems, offers an unlikely array of characters: Edward Lear, Mitt Romney, Amy Clampitt, and Andy Kaufman share the stage. Walker himself is ever-present, with his shrugs, his heartbreak, his "way-out rhymes": "I'd like to write some lines about the snow, / but -- I dunno, / the snow seems so / fleeting: / a flock of gulls, late for a meeting." Full of comic interruptions and grave forecasts, these poems surprise, delight, and terrify.

80 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2016

About the author

Cody Walker lives in Ann Arbor and teaches English at the University of Michigan. He's the author of two poetry collections: The Self-Styled No-Child and Shuffle and Breakdown, both from The Waywiser Press. His awards include the James Boatwright III Prize for Poetry from Shenandoah and residency fellowships from the University of Arizona Poetry Center and the Amy Clampitt Fund. A longtime writer-in-residence in Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools program, he was elected Seattle Poet Populist in 2007. His work appears in The Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, Parnassus, Slate, The Yale Review, and Poetry Northwest. He blogs for The Kenyon Review.

Reviews

[Cody Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote this book -- so, I liked it pretty well.