Maybe the Body
by Asa Drake
A Most Anticipated Book of 2026 from Debutiful and Garden & Gun
"Radiant . . . a generous offering full of flora and fury." —Aimee Nezhukumatathil
A brilliant debut poetry collection by National Poetry Series finalist Asa Drake that explores the lineage and future lineage of a body shaped by economic, ecological, and political dissonance.
In her stunning debut poetry collection, Maybe the Body, Asa Drake witnesses firsthand the conflicts between art and patriotism, labor and longing. She reaches for the lush landscapes—real and recounted—of the Philippines and the American South as she traces the lineage of a body shaped by economic, ecological, and political dissonance. As one poem reminds us, "it's so hard to write about love without writing about the country we live in." These thirty-eight poems, threaded together with a six-part braided sequence, bind a multigenerational conversation between grandmothers, mothers, and aunts through a range of forms, from pantoums to prose poems. With its vivid imagery and an unforgettable lyrical perspective, Maybe the Body reconsiders the natural transactions of work, intimacy, and the poem itself.
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Review
"Lush and fierce and teeming with love." —Southern Review of Books
"[A] sage collection." —Poetry Northwest, A Favorite Poetry Collection of Winter
"A book that offers so much to love—precision of language [and] a deeply embedded sense of both narrative and lyric devotion." —Split Lip Magazine
"Sumptuous, lush, observant, Drake turns her perceptiveness back onto those who look towards her and her body with an occupying gaze, and in doing so, creates her own—flesh-blooded, flower-wrought—empire." —Four Way Review
"Excellent . . . These poems reverberate with an infectious joy, celebrating the revolutionary act of enduring day after day." —Publishers Weekly
"Clever . . . deftly turning over and over many different kinds of love." —Electric Lit
"Disruptive and thought-provoking . . . explores questions of home, discomfort, belonging, and stability. Drake's work is especially poignant in a time of economic instability and powerful during a time when the nation is grappling with who we are and who gets to be here." —Soapberry Review
"This collection debuts Asa Drake as a sage of liminal states and spaces." —Janine Joseph, author of Decade of the Brain
"Reveals how our very bodies are shaped by sociopolitical forces." —Library Journal
"Asa Drake urges us to reconsider, and this is invaluable in a time of hot takes." —VerseCurious
"Maybe the Body is a radiant collection, a generous offering full of flora and fury, plums, and caterpillars. These poems are a field of inheritance where language, history, and lineage collide, and in Drake's capable hands, the body becomes both question and altar." —Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders and Bite by Bite
"'Sometimes, history is too beautiful to be believed,' Asa Drake writes in her collection Maybe the Body, which is an extensive love song of memory, family, self, and the challenges of differentiating one from the other. When a speaker wades in a river that runs beneath an interstate, they think of a mother's words: 'Care first. Decide about love later.' This book is about places and homes: ones we don't want to lose, ones we find in others, and those we must decide to build for ourselves. Maybe the Body is the home I have longed for." —Phillip B. Williams, author of Mutiny and Ours
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