Last Day of My Face (Iowa Poetry Prize)

James Shea’s collection deepens his exploration of the elegiac imagination, sending estranged speakers into new fields of quiet crisis. Orbiting a vast absence, Last Day of My Face reveals a kaleidoscopic perspective on impermanence: “Tomorrow / is a partial and promised gift.”

Rich with reversals, short poems are wedged against skittery contemplations, and an easeful tone coexists with a vein of darkness. Akin to lucid dreaming, this startling volume builds toward a final poem that gathers fragments of selves into a wondrous whole.