Instructions for Seeing a Ghost - Vassar Miller Prize Winner
Winner, Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry This poetry collection is the record of an American's return home after a decade abroad, an exile imposed solely because he loved another man. In a virtuoso display of lyric and formal inventiveness, Bellin-Oka's poems meditate on the myriad losses engendered by diaspora: of home, family and sexual identity, and spiritual certainty. "Steve Bellin-Oka's poems hold in balance an intensified language and a passionate voice that bring together the struggles of the inner life with stark realities. This is a book of arresting authenticity."--Peter Balakian, Pulitzer-Prize winner and judge From "Self-Portrait as the Chosen One" Long before I was what I am now, short of breath, bald, just returned with arthritic knees from exile in another country's muck and red volcanic soil, too near-sighted to discern the High Plains tumbleweed from the burning bush of myth, scorched now and silent, long before this, I was the first son my mother bore that lived. Number Twenty-seven: Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry STEVE BELLIN-OKA is the author of a chapbook, Dead Letter Office at North Atlantic Station and is the recipient of a Tulsa Artists Fellowship in poetry. He has taught at the University of Mississippi and Eastern New Mexico University. He lives in Tulsa with his husband.
About This Poetry Collection
This collection documents themes of exile, return, and identity through lyric poetry. The poems examine the experience of diaspora and the losses that accompany displacement from home and family. Written with formal inventiveness, the work addresses spiritual questioning and the complexities of sexual identity in contemporary America.
Recognition and Awards
Selected as the twenty-seventh winner of the prestigious Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, this collection was judged by Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Balakian, who praised its intensified language and authentic voice.
