Nov 15th, 2025
In Dorianne Laux’s poetry collection, The Book of Men, she shares poems about her life, her daily thoughts, and the small moments she experiences. The book starts (predictably) with poems about men: famous men, ordinary men, and men she has known or simply seen from a distance. But as you read, the focus grows wider. The poems explore bigger themes like memory, getting older, dealing with loss, and finding kindness even in a difficult world.
Laux’s writing style is clear and simple. Yet there’s a weight of emotion behind every line. The book is dotted with poems about everyday life, except that everyday life can be sobering and even traumatic. In fact, her poems feel strongest when she shares slivers from her own past, details that seem taken straight from a photo album. Honest, emotional details that are relatable to almost anyone.
In “Mother’s Day,” one of the most powerful poems in the book, Laux writes about her aging mother: “The stroke took whole pages of words, random years torn from the calendar.” A poignant image created with simple, yet vivid wording.
In another poem, she writes, “I watch clouds tear themselves apart around the stars.” These lines aren’t fancy for their own sake; they show the pain of life slowly coming undone.
Throughout The Book of Men, Laux shifts back and forth between memories and reflections, connecting moments from her past and present. In “Bakersfield, 1969,” she describes a tense moment with her ex-boyfriend’s mother: “She watched me from the sides of her eyes while I ate. When I offered to wash the dishes she told me she wouldn’t stand her son being taken advantage of.” The moment seems small, but it reveals disturbing ideas about class, gender, and the small cruelties that can hide in family life. Laux has a talent for capturing these brief but powerful interactions, moments that stay with you forever.
In “Learning to Drive,” she looks back on her youth and the innocence of early relationships. A boy teaches her to drive, but he’s soon leaving for Vietnam. As he watches her drive alone in the desert, she writes, “his back pressed against all that emptiness.” The line feels haunting, reminding us how quickly an ordinary moment can take on a world of meaning.
We see more pieces of her life in poems like “Foster Child,” where her family takes in a boy named Jimmy for a short time. “He was already old when our mom took him in. Wild, she said, her job to tame him.” The attempt at adoption doesn’t work, and Laux writes simply, “Young still when he left us to live at the Boy’s Home.” It’s a small snapshot of loss, told gently and without dramatic emotion.
In “Lost in Costco,” she reveals her mother’s fading memory with heartbreaking simplicity: “She rested for a moment on the edge of a bed in the furniture section, trying to remember if it was time to sleep.” The scene is normal, but it demonstrates someone losing track of their own life, in an ordinary but sobering way.
In “Second Chances,” Laux writes about addiction and hope: “What are the chances my niece will hit bottom before Christmas, a drop we all long for, and quit heroin?” The line demonstrates the painful truth that sometimes you hope someone will fall just far enough to start climbing back up. Her poems don’t promise happy endings, only the strength it takes to keep going.
The Book of Men may start as a look at masculinity, but it evolves into something much bigger. It turns into a reflection on fragile lives, family connections, and how time changes us.
The poems almost feel like letters to her past or to versions of herself she can’t reach anymore. Each poem opens up a part of her life that still hurts, but she writes about that pain with honesty, warmth, and courage.
The Book of Men won the Paterson Prize, and it is available to purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and indie bookstores.
Review by Cetywa Powell