![The cover of "Rising Out of Nowhere" by Jay Featherstone: A blue sky. Towards the bottom, wispy clouds and the tops of a few green trees.](http://www.jayfeatherstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/rising_out_of_nowhere.png)
Fenway Press, 2023
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Rising Out of Nowhere is Joseph “Jay” Featherstone’s crowning achievement. Coming after his earlier Fenway Press books (Glass in 2019 and Vermeer Paints My Mother in 2022) this new collection displays a tightness of focus along with a dashing freedom of thought. Ranging from Gloucester’s Eastern Point to post-war Japan, by turns elegiac and and celebratory, Featherstone grieves his losses and celebrates his existence along with his human and natural companions: the marsh hawk sailing by his late wife’s memorial service, and “the Luna moth, crazy for my shirt breast/ in wild gusts of wind at my mother’s gravesite–/ all my familiars, rising out of nowhere.” This is a rich and ample book by a great American poet at the top of his game.