What Happened to the Inca Doves? by Boyer Rickel
What Happened to the Inca Doves? by Boyer Rickel
Publication date: January 12, 2027
156 pages
© 2027
ISBN: 978-1-961834-17-0
Book Design: Christopher Nelson
Cover art: Yard Wings 2021 by Gary Kautto
Perfect-bound
6” x 9”
Winner of the Wishing Jewel Prize for poetic innovation
What Happened to the Inca Doves? reveals a life through a mosaic of literary forms: prose poems, diary entries, epistles, fragments of dreams. Its seven sections work in concert toward a portrait, from childhood memories to the death of a lover to the desires of a man in his eighth decade. What remains consistent throughout is a steady, welcoming voice, trustworthy and brave in its eagerness to understand.
I have long been awed by Boyer Rickel’s art. In his magnificent new collection, he creates an alchemical mix of lyrically-charged prose, perfect musical pitch, and judicious narratives of love and loss. His poems brim with the largesse of his being. As after great pain, Rickel arrives at this inscrutable question: “If emotions embody judgments…, / what does a lack of feeling say? Or fury?” What Happened to the Inca Doves? is a stunning work by a poet commanding the full force of his talent. —Cynthia Hogue, author of instead, it is dark
Boyer Rickel’s What Happened to the Inca Doves? is a fascinating, moving account of how someone very alive experiences, freshly, life’s currents and rapids. Unguarded, consistently authentic, and deeply considered, Rickel’s lyrics range in form, defying and challenging genre; it is difficult to summarize how much he achieves. This is a stunning and memorable book that I will return to again and again. —John Levy, Shelley Memorial Award recipient
Read “Last Things” from What Happened to the Inca Doves?
Boyer Rickel’s publications include two book-length poetry collections, arreboles (Wesleyan) and remanence (Parlor Press), a memoir-in-essays, Taboo (Wisconsin); Morgan (a Lyric), winner of the Gold Line Press nonfiction chapbook contest, as well as three poetry chapbooks, Tempo Rubato (Green Linden Press), Musick’s Handmaid and reliquary (both from Seven Kitchens Press). A recipient of poetry fellowships from the NEA and the Arizona Commission on the Arts, he taught in the University of Arizona Creative Writing Program for twenty years.