Praise for The Book of John

Lindsey Royce has given us a beautifully observed book of love and remembrance, loss and endurance. You will be moved. You might even be changed. It is shining with life.

—Luis Alberto Urrrea, author of House of Fallen Angels

In her finely wrought and emotionally gripping collection The Book of John, Lindsey Royce asks where we carry the dead, and her answers through the deep questioning of these pitch-perfect poems at once broke my heart and healed it. The speaker asks her beloved through the veil, “Let me solve / the puzzle of where you are, bring you / back to me for one more night,” and the magic of this collection responds with a resounding yes. Compassionate, compelling, at turns incisive with righteous and understandable anger, and, ultimately, redeeming and filled to the core with love, Royce’s collection asks us to cherish what we may have unintentionally taken for granted. This book is vulnerable and honest and Royce’s poetic craft at its sharpest, wisest, and most empathetic. Read this book and be transformed.

–Jenn Givhan, author of Belly to the Brutal and River Woman, River Demon

Lindsey Royce’s The Book of John is a full-throated argument with and indictment of the father god of Christian teachings. As cancer eats away and ultimately kills her husband John, Royce bravely expresses her fear and anger, interrogating the masculine constructs of the divine and its influence on the military and her veteran beloved. She trusts herself to embrace her critique along with her faith that the spirit world dwells somewhere, her thrill in her Marine’s sexiness, and his gourmet meat and potatoes cooking. God’s absence, God’s withholding of nurturance, and God’s failure to intervene for the dying who suffer and starve leads her to question “if a Godthing with mercy even exists.” Concurrent with this “smart misery” is erotic joy, connection, resilience, grace, humor, and delight. She takes up the mantle of priestess, feeder of souls, guiding us into the liminal space where the living and dead meet. This is poetry that touches and transports, which is what we expect from the art; the difference in The Book of John is the generously with which the poet nourishes our creativity, inspiring us to sing—renewed!—in our own voices. Lindsey Royce serves us our communion feast with her sublime poetry, inviting us, “Break bread with me then— / Make merry, drink my wine.”

—Aliki Barnstone, author of Dwelling and former Poet Laureate of Missouri (2016-2019)