The Discarded Life: Poems

In these moving and meditative poems, Adam Kirsch shows how the experiences and recognitions of early life continue to shape us into adulthood. Richly evoking a 1980s childhood in Los Angeles, Kirsch uses Gen X landmarks-from Devo to Atari to the Challenger disaster-to tell a story of emotional and artistic coming of age, exploring universal questions of meaning, mortality, and how we become who we are.