In these moving and meditative poems, Adam Kirsch shows how the experiences and recognitions of early life continue to shape us into adulthood. Richly evoking a 1980s childhood in Los Angeles, Kirsch uses Gen X landmarks—from Devo to Atari to the Challenger disaster—to tell a story of emotional and artistic coming of age, exploring universal questions of meaning, mortality, and how we become who we are.
“The Discarded Life is a wonderfully seaworthy and streamlined vessel that carries us capably through the treacherous straits of youth and the pensive, open seas of adulthood.” —Leslie Monsour, The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Kirsch writes poetry that is self-effacing but not abject, whose formal audacity is undercut by its sense of perspective. The poet’s mind, Kirsch seems to suggest, grows when it knows its limits.”—Anahid Nersessian, The New York Review of Books
Adam Kirsch 