The Suicide’s Son
James Arthur
(Signal Editions, Véhicule Press, 2019, $14.95, 77 pp)
James Arthur’s second collection of poems, The Suicide’s Son, is a challenging book with philosophical heft, which doesn’t surprise, given that his earlier work has been described as earning “nearly every award, fellowship, and grant an emerging poet could hope to win.” Arthur has already established himself as an inventive craftsman, able to move deftly between religious, mythological, historical, and personal topics while writing free verse lines that at times cleverly incorporate rhyme and meter. In The Suicide’s Son, we encounter his mastery of individual lyrics, but the collection is more than the best of his journal publications. It gathers in the mind as a single text as Arthur both poses and answers questions about the ideas, objects, and traits we broadly inherit—as family members, as members of a culture, as animals—and how we respond to the often troubling content of that inheritance.