Rare Fuel

In Rare Fuel, Rex Wilder's fourth book, winner of the Finishing Line Press Donna Wolf-Palacio Poetry Prize, the author is "the Virgil who guides us through the underworld of his own personal hell" (George Bilgere), "his time as an inpatient in a mental health facility, alongside the kindness, the weirdness, the characters and the discoveries he made there. You can place it alongside the language's other great verse chronicles of madness: Christopher Smart, say, or Ivor Gurney" (Stephanie Burt). The book resonates with the wisdom of a man "deeply invested in the mortal world," as A.E. Stallings once highlighted. The poems ring with "the exhilaration of freedom from the chains of confinement" (Grace Schulman). Rex Wilder does not merely return to form here; he transcends it, offering readers a rare and vibrant fuel to illuminate their darkest nights.