The Wild Iris
Kyrie

My Specific Awe and Wonder

My Specific Awe and Wonder is a collection of new and selected poems Jackson described as “a love letter to Vermont” with “all the potholes visible.” Here are poems about his experience living in, loving, and leaving Vermont, alongside poems of his childhood, his DC neighborhood, his travels-both physical and metaphorical-and the Kelly Donaldson persona poems that tell it like it is. This collection, Jackson’s third, includes poems that he called his “strongest, most evocative work.” Jackson (1956-2024) left behind handwritten drafts and voicemails, which have been transcribed and compiled posthumously to keep his voice and legacy of poetry alive.

More Adult, Non-Juvenile Books

  • In James, when the enslaved Jim learns he is to be sold in New Orleans, he hides on Jackson Island to devise a plan for escape. Meanwhile, Huck Finn, having faked his own death, embarks on a perilous journey down the Mississippi River, intertwining their fates as they confront themes of freedom and agency in a reimagined narrative of American literature.
  • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author.
  • In Juneteenth Rodeo, Bird's lens celebrates a world that was undervalued at the time, capturing everything, from the moment the pit master fired up his smoker, through the death-defying rides, to the last celebratory dance at a nearby honky-tonk.
  • In Just For The Summer, Justin is cursed to have every woman he dates find their soulmate immediately after their breakup. When he teams up with Emma, a traveling nurse with her own romantic troubles, they devise a plan to date and break up to cancel their curses. However, as they navigate unexpected challenges and real feelings, they begin to wonder if fate has a different plan for them.