Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Theory of Impact

Theory of Impact

Cleary, Eileen
McInnis, Michael
Sullivan, Lisa J.

Paperback

General ParentingGeneral Poetry

Publisher Price: $18.00

ISBN10: 1957755776
ISBN13: 9781957755779
Publisher: Lily Poetry Review
Published: May 14 2026
Pages: 72
Weight: 0.24
Height: 0.17 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

In Theory of Impact, Lisa Sullivan uncovers the long aftermath of her father's military service-its fear, tenderness, and bewildering intimacies-without accusation or explanation, even as other absences such as childlessness move quietly through the book, their contours felt in the life around them. The poems unfold through startling imagery and associations: a father draws maps in pencil, which he would erase, erase, erase; a shell lifted from the shore holds its aperture dark. Only in the closing poems, when Sullivan encounters her father's Marine Corps letters once sent home, does another history emerge: mosquitoes, rifles mottled with rust, the rigid discipline of combat drills, and the place where men are taught to kill. The book's seemingly scattered histories converge, pressing inward, until what was lost reclaims its rightful place, returning to the speaker again, part of me.

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