The Rigid Body
Gabriel Spera's second book of poetry, The Rigid Body, was selected by U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey to receive the 2011 Richard Snyder prize and was published by Ashland Poetry Press.
Reviews of The Rigid Body can be found in the following publications:
Rattle: "…Here, I thought, is finally a real poet, one who cares about both language and feeling.…The Rigid Body has given me new hope that poetry is indeed not dead, and that there may yet be new ways of looking at a blackbird."
ForeWord Reviews: "…a knockout fight against physical rigidity. While the rigid body signifies death in this collection, the poet does not limit his scope to only skin and bone, carrying readers into the intersections of physical and mental hardness that harm more than ourselves. Despite the presence in these poems of the shadows of death, torture, and the human need for control, Spera favors a natural view of the world…"