The Mended Animal

At the core of The Mended Animal is a baffling loss that cannot be forgotten or transcended.Rather, in poems that are as painful as they are precise, the radiating damage of that loss is traced from the past into the present, from childhood into adulthood, from one place to another, with each place made "sacred and troubled" by human brokenness. Brandon Lewis is writing a poetry of great bleakness, yes, but The Mended Animal is also a work of painstakingly beautiful story, wherein each story's telling grasps at the unresolved mystery of those we love, of the self, of the human heart and its burdens of grief and vigilance.

-Rick Barot, author of Moving the Bones

Language cannot convey the awe, reverence, and affection I feel for The Mended Animal. Brandon Lewis is an absolute master of both narrative and vulnerability as he navigates the reader through profound loss, grief and the slow gathering and ebbing and gathering again of recovery. The Mended Animal might just be the thing that saves your life. It has mine.

-Kevin Goodan, author of In the Days That Followed