Tom Sleigh's poems are skeptical of the inevitability of our fate, but in this brilliant new collection, they are charged with a powerful sense of premonition, as if the future is unfolding before us, demanding something greater than the self. Justice is a prevailing force, even while the poems are fully cognizant of the refugee crisis, war, famine, and the brutal reality of a crowded hospital morgue. The King's Touch collides the world of fact and the world of mystery with a resolutely secular register. The title poem refers to the once-held belief that the king, as a divine representative, is imbued with the power of healing touch. Sleigh turns this encounter between illness and human contact toward his own chronic blood disease and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its mounting death tolls. One poem asks, "isn't it true that no matter how long you / wear them, masks don't grieve, only faces do?" In this essential new work, Sleigh shows how the language of poetry itself can revive and recuperate a sense of a future under the conditions of violence, social unrest, and global anxiety about the fate of the planet.

A profound encounter with the hyperreality of our time of global upheaval, violence, and pandemic.

About the Author
Tom Sleigh is the author of the poetry collections House of Fact, House of Ruin; Station Zed; and Army Cats, and the essay collections The Land between Two Rivers and Interview with a Ghost. He teaches at Hunter College in New York.


Book Information
ISBN 9781644450772
Author Tom Sleigh
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Graywolf Press,U.S.
Publisher Graywolf Press,U.S.
Weight(grams) 218g
Dimensions(mm) 227mm * 165mm * 14mm