Rational Anthem

by Casey Thayer

Finalist, 2022 Miller Williams Poetry Prize In a voice at times electrified by caustic cynicism, at other times stripped bare by grief, Casey Thayer’s Rational Anthem offers wry tribute to “the greatest country God could craft with the mules he had / on hand.” In seeking to tell the story of the ragged world around him, Thayer examines the links among flag-waving populism, religious fervor, and toxic masculinity. Here male intimacy—among childhood friends, between father and son, and in the tenuous bonds between young adults—generally finds acceptance only when expressed through a shared passion for guns and “I helped my father clean his hands with field grass, / convinced we had shared a moment / in rolling the internal organs out of the abdomen.” In “How-To,” the book’s closer—a mash-up of instructions from active-shooter trainings attended by the poet—Thayer grasps at strategies for surviving a world where we have come to see school shootings as “Grab a textbook, they instructed my child, and hug it to your chest over your heart.” Formally deft and lyrically dense, Rational Anthem asks why we find it so hard to change the stories we keep repeating.

94 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2022

About the author

Casey Thayer, Wisconsin born and bred, earned degrees at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and Northern Michigan University. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Devil’s Lake, North American Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He is currently developing and revising his second book manuscript, a collection of poems backboned by an exploration of gun culture.

Reviews

[Laurel Roth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really smart (and timely) exploration of patriotism and masculinity. Will be thinking about this one for a while.