Trust Only the Trembling

Pacific Northwest poet Christian Skoorsmith navigates the terrain and terroir of being male-socialized and male-identifying, while seeking authenticity and meaning in a world which in recent decades has seen precious little of worth in manhood or masculinity. Eschewing easy binaries and resisting the tropes of returning to some imagined, unadulterated past "where men were men," Skoorsmith touches the wound and wonder, the hope and contradictions, the struggles, small victories, and honest failings of one man. He lays himself most bare, exploring the question he learned implicitly early on that it was wrong to even ask: what does it mean to be a man?