Gabriel

Hirsch's poem Gabriel, is as raw, as relentless in its inconsolability, as anything I've read. --David Ulin, Los Angeles Times Part tribute; part existential howl; part intellectual investigation of our most primal emotions; part novella-like, buoyant, unsentimental romp through the life of Hirsch's 'wild spirit, beloved son...' --Emily Rapp, New York Times Book Review Hirsch's lightening-lit portrait of and surging lament for his hurricane of a son is a courageous, generous, and reverberating epic of fatherly love and mourning. --Donna Seaman, Booklist, starred reivew Embedded within Gabriel is a picaresque novella about a tempestuous boy and young man, a part Hirsch calls 'the adventures of Gabriel...' [The poet] Eavan Boland described Gabriel as 'a masterpiece of sorrow. . . the creation of the loved and lost boy is one of the poem's most important effects.' --Alec Wilkinson, The New Yorker Unpunctuated, unrhymed triplets serve Hirsch's grief and tell his story well. . . a near-unforgettable book-length verse memoir describing the life and death, the rambunctious childhood, the adventurous youth, the funeral, and the enduring memory, of the poet's only son. --Publishers Weekly Gabriel resists sentimentality at every line break, though it is the most heartfelt poem I have read. --Tim Adams, The Observer Gabriel is an exquisite document of loss. --Michael Andor Brodeur, Boston Globe From the Hardcover edition.