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In his debut poetry collection, The Nature of Things Fragile, Peter Vertacnik depicts a world fraught with vulnerability and loss. Utilizing a wide range of both received and nonce poetic forms, including sonnets, villanelles, triolets, a sestina, epigrams, blank verse, and word-count, he confronts the illnesses and deaths of loved ones, both recent and long past (“Face Value,” “Odd Elegy,” “Trace,”); the memories of old houses and towns left behind (“Departure,” Sugar Beets,” “Mourning Doves”); and the vanishing of once-ubiquitous analog particulars (“Apology to Candles,” “Dial Tone,” “In Praise of Blank Cassettes”). It is indeed a book of elegies, but one that also celebrates the people, places, and things it laments, preserving their names and details while laying them to rest.
The Nature of Things Fragile is the winner of the twenty-third New Criterion Poetry Prize.
Peter Vertacnik has curated “Forgotten Good Poems” online for years—all the while learning from his readings how to create memorable lines of his own: “No ashes now, just the syllables of doves.” The Nature of Things Fragile is full of poems that deserve to endure.
— Amit Majmudar
PETER VERTACNIK was born in Saginaw, Michigan. He holds degrees in creative writing and English from the University of Florida, Texas Tech University, and Penn State University. His poetry, translations, and criticism have appeared in 32 Poems, Bad Lilies, The Cortland Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, The New Criterion, Phoebe, Plume, The Spectator (World), THINK, and Water~Stone Review. He lives in Jacksonville, Florida, where he teaches at Episcopal School of Jacksonville.