Winner of the inaugural Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, <i>North American Stadiums</i> is an assured debut collection about grace—the places we search for it, and the disjunction between what we seek and where we arrive.<br><br> "You were supposed to find God here / the signs said." In these poems, hinterlands demand our close attention; overlooked places of industry become sites for pilgrimage; and history large and small—of a city, of a family, of a shirt—is unearthed. Here is a factory emptying for the day, a snowy road just past border patrol, a baseball game at dusk. Mile signs point us toward Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Salt Lake City, Chicago. And god is not the God expected, but the still moment amid movement: a field «lit like the heart / of the night,» black stars stitched to the yellow sweatshirts of men in a crowd.<br><br> A map «bleached / pale by time and weather,» <i>North American Stadiums</i> is a collection at once resolutely unsentimental yet deeply tender, illuminating the historical forces that shape the places we inhabit and how those places, in turn, shape us.
