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Rodeo
Winner of the 2024 Donald Justice Poetry Prize, selected by Patricia Smith, this collection of formalist poetry is part ode, part elegy, and serves as a heartfelt journey in overcoming grief and falling back in love with the world.
Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s second full-length collection, Rodeo, is personal yet expansive, as Wilkinson carries her readers through sorrow and confusion, reckoning with seismic losses such as a stillborn son and strained relationships, alongside more abstract and existential pains. In the rural and wild western mountains of northern Utah and throughout the American West, Wilkinson finds solace, uncovering startling moments of hope and healing in the aftermath of suffering.
Throughout Rodeo, Wilkinson masterfully employs forms like the sonnet, sestina, abecedarian, and epistle to bring wholeness in the midst of fracture. Even while staring clear-eyed at its wounds, the collection resists being swallowed by grief, instead celebrating and meditating on the natural world and its vibrancy, including skunks and owls, horses and cows, wildflowers and grasses. The collection presents a full cycle of mourning and healing, beginning “Sometimes you hold your own hand. / That’s all there is to take” and concludes by reaching out from isolation toward connection with “a hand / for one moment holding / another hand.
Drawing from the traditions of poets like Theodore Roethke and Mary Oliver and embodying the interconnectedness between land and spirit, individual and community, Rodeo is a powerful rekindling of hope.
Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s second full-length collection, Rodeo, is personal yet expansive, as Wilkinson carries her readers through sorrow and confusion, reckoning with seismic losses such as a stillborn son and strained relationships, alongside more abstract and existential pains. In the rural and wild western mountains of northern Utah and throughout the American West, Wilkinson finds solace, uncovering startling moments of hope and healing in the aftermath of suffering.
Throughout Rodeo, Wilkinson masterfully employs forms like the sonnet, sestina, abecedarian, and epistle to bring wholeness in the midst of fracture. Even while staring clear-eyed at its wounds, the collection resists being swallowed by grief, instead celebrating and meditating on the natural world and its vibrancy, including skunks and owls, horses and cows, wildflowers and grasses. The collection presents a full cycle of mourning and healing, beginning “Sometimes you hold your own hand. / That’s all there is to take” and concludes by reaching out from isolation toward connection with “a hand / for one moment holding / another hand.
Drawing from the traditions of poets like Theodore Roethke and Mary Oliver and embodying the interconnectedness between land and spirit, individual and community, Rodeo is a powerful rekindling of hope.
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
Published April 22, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 16, 2025
4.5 rounded up. Lovely lovely lovely. I love to see other Utah Poets and how the approach writing about my home. This is truly a wonderful collection I wish I had been able to read before publishing my own. So many just heart achingly tender moments.
May 1, 2026
"I want to nurture the world, / but I'm afraid of it." - from "Snow and Mud and Animal Bones"
April 15, 2025
Bravo Sunni Brown Wilkinson. This is a book of raw heart and delicate lyricism. Wilkinson builds a world. She draws you in. She invites the reader to sit with her in joy and grief. These are technically capable poems--remarkable. I haven't enjoyed reading a book of poetry like this in quite some time. Like many women doing quiet literary work, Wilkinson is a poet who could get lost in the vast literary landscape. Don't let that happen. Get this book.
May 1, 2025
La verdad que estuvo bueno leer este poemario, me gustó que sea woman related pero la escritura era bastante pesada para leer.
Hubieron varios versos que rescaté y que me rescataron a seguir leyendo, pero por momentos parecia interminable!
Hubieron varios versos que rescaté y que me rescataron a seguir leyendo, pero por momentos parecia interminable!
August 17, 2025
These poems delight and stun, in equal measure, wending their way into my heart.
October 17, 2025
Beautiful poems - a situation I've never experienced but somehow how feel like I perfectly understand
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews