The Man Grave

Book excerpt: Winner of the 2020 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award, poems that consider and attempt to allay toxic masculinity The Man Grave portrays the corrosiveness, violence, and loneliness of all-too-familiar strains of American masculinity. In perceptive and moving poems, Christopher Salerno explores patriarchy, boyhood, lust, misogyny and homophobia, infertility, and family in an effort to diagnose—and remedy—inherited patterns of manliness. “Have I / made it any further than my father / in his laughter, before his slaughter?” Salerno writes. His new collection is a moving and generous answer.