Amerigun: Poems

by Anne Marie Macari

In her heartrending sixth collection of poetry, Anne Marie Macari communes with a brother decades gone and calls out a gun-obsessed America has enabled countless similar deaths.

In Amerigun, a stunning collection of loss and rediscovery, poet Anne Marie Macari revisits her brother Edward’s long-ago death by a self-inflicted gunshot. Interweaving and disentangling her own memories and those of her family, and by reconstructing a legal and medical paper trail, Macari begins a dialogue with the dead, bringing her brother’s lost voice back to her after years of sealing herself off from him. Embedded in her story is the devastation of a culture that elevates guns and violence over the sacredness of human life. Yet, out of that devastation, Macari writes a kind of love story, renewing her connection with her brother, as well with other departed friends and family.  By revisiting grief, she uncovers a deeply-felt gratitude for the world around her―and indeed for her own life.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

Published March 24, 2026

About the author

Anne Marie Macari is an American poet. Her most recent book is She Heads Into the Wilderness. Her first book won The APR/Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry.

Reviews

[The_J · Rating 2 out of 5]

Deeply personal and, perhaps, moving for some. But being afraid of guns should be for our enemies.

"Forty years since his death, and I still want something
that will make sense."

&
"Some of us are young and inexperienced
and some have spiraled over and again"

In the last quote from the Nest, this collection could merely be made of many such spirals.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been trying to read more poetry and am happy I stumbled upon this collection of poems. Beautifully written, tragic, and insightful look into America's complicated and destructive love of guns.