Winter of Worship

Steeped in lossof climate and childhood, of fathers and friendsWinter of Worship finds survival in our tender human connections.Told through an ever-queer lens, Kayleb Rae Candrillis fourth collection, Winter of Worship, is a patchwork of the pastoral and the litter swirled around usa pandemic, global warming, a hometown hit by storms of fentanyl and Oxycontin scripts. A book of elegy told in ghazals, Marble Runs, and other forms, these poems reckon with loss: of climate, of fathers, of youth. Candrilli writes, We are so young / to know so much about life without / our friends. Steeped in the grief of these losses, Winter of Worship finds healing in the smallest memories: Nokia phone cases, jalapeo gardens, pop flys, 67 Dodge darts, YouTube mixes all electronica and / glitch step. We also find survival in our tender human connections: an iPod tucked into the jacket pocket of a drifter, a kiss pressed to a partners forehead, a mother calling her child by their chosen name. From the cornfields of Pennsylvania to the streets of downtown Brooklyn, these poems refuse to forget, refuse to lose an ounce of gentleness.