In Middletown, her third book of poems, Stephanie Rogers reflects on her chaotic childhood in the drug-addled industrial wasteland of Middletown, Ohio. In an engrossing collection of formal beauty, sardonic wit, scathing anger, and class resentment, Rogers' uniquely vivid voice describes a transformation from a frightened but defiant little girl to a desperate, angry adolescent, and finally, to an adult coping with the death of her estranged father, an addict. In the end, Middletown reveals the rage and rapture of growing up feeling unloved in the middle of nowhere.
"In her third collection, Middletown, Stephanie Rogers goes hard and never lets up. This book scrupulously examines, in the tradition of Ai, Nick Flynn, and Dorianne Laux, family dysfunction, violence, and addiction with courage and craft. It's both a visceral and deeply emotional experience to read these unforgettable poems. "…Where does the hate go?" Rogers asks. "Maybe it turns into a mouth." In difficult families, hate and love, thrown together like stunned siblings, are often hard to tell apart. In Middletown, they turn into more than mouths; they turn into these poems."
