Leviathan

“Leviathan is a retelling of Job in which the enduring story is made both painfully familiar and frighteningly strange, and so the poem strikes one as Job might have struck its first readers, which, it seems to me, is more than one can reasonably hope from any book.” —Shane McCrae

Leviathan, the highly anticipated second collection by Michael Shewmaker, offers an innovative reimagining of the book of Job. Set in the landscape of modern East Texas, the poem unfolds in four cycles of interchanging monologues, each compounding the difficulties of a faith placed in a distant God. With an accomplished music wholly its own, Shewmaker’s verse shifts effortlessly between song and story, unearthing beauty from the deep well of loss and doubt.