Field Guide for Accidents

“Albert Abonado’s poems open us up to feast and to wonder. This book asks: How do we grieve with the belly? How can we find nourishment from a cloud? Why don’t we laugh, really laugh out loud, more often—and isn’t that a form of prayer? And when can our exhausted parents rest, when can the immigrant worker fully rest, mouth open in dream, snores at full delicious blast? I feel so held by this book. Cradled, in fact. While, at the same time, challenged—to climb a tree, to dive into sea, to stop hiding my own hunger, my teeth. ‘Every good mouth knows when to be unhinged,’ one poem declares, and I want to live inside that declaration. Let this poetry unhinge your life.”
—Chen Chen, author of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

“Full of ghosts and prayers, Field Guide for Accidents is an exceptional book. Albert Abonado is a poet with the ability to maintain a clear and precise voice while navigating mysteries that are as vast as god and family and grief and America. The result is a collection of poems that are as insightful as they are emotionally expansive.”
—Matthew Olzmann, author of Constellation Route

Albert Abonado is the author of Jaw (Sundress Publications). He holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has appeared in the Boston Review, Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, The Margins, Hobart, Waxwing, Triquarterly, and others. Albert currently teaches creative writing at SUNY Geneseo and the Rochester Institute for Technology. He is the former Director of Adult Programs at Writers & Books.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.