Blossom Boy (Beck Anson)

Blossom Boy, the debut chapbook by Beck Anson, is the winner of the 7th Annual Wavelengths Chapbook Contest. This chapbook reflects on humanity through nature and the power of identity. His poem, “I Admit Myself to the Psych Ward in a Pandemic,” was a finalist for the 2020 Rattle Poetry Prize.

“Beck Anson writes from a body full of questions and a pen that notices everything. In Blossom Boy they ask ‘how the body knows what it knows’, ask readers to follow them into an exploration of ‘the magic…in the transformation’. In these poems, Beck asks us to see him and his becoming, and in doing so gives us the gift of looking ‘beyond the surface’ of our own selves. With a deep love of the natural world seeping into this collection, Anson masterfully balances out a whimsical study of beauty with a gut-dropping honesty on the page. Blossom Boy will make you rethink what it means to unearth the self, by offering up this astounding poet’s own map as a guide for staying and allowing oneself to become.”

—Melissa Sussens, author of Slaughterhouse