The Resurrection Machine

by Steve Gehrke

Price 72 pages, $11.95 paper

ISBN 1-886157-21-9

Winner of the John Ciardi Poetry Prize from BkMk Press

The Resurrection Machine . . . is as well-made as any human endeavor can be. --The Kansas City Star

Steve Gehrke's poems chronicle the body's losses and recoveries. The Resurrection Machine is a fearless investigation of both the world of the body and the body of the world. In this book, the poems offer us a profoundly moving evocation of illness, death and a surprising and redemptive faith, while their musicality engages and delights us. A heart 'opens and closes like an umbrella.' A man 'unlocks' himself from his own skin. The body's organs divide the past from the future. The poems in this collection introduce us to a daring and eloquent new voice in American poetry. --Nicole Cooley

"With surgical precision, Steve Gehrke's poems open us to the complex mysteries of our fragmented bodies and lives. What happens inside us when a mother's donated kidney fails inside her son? How does a marriage weather a husband's genuine doubts about how he'll feel toward his wife when another person's heart beats in his chest? Thousands of patients literally own what this poet calls 'fractions of the dead.' All of us do, metaphorically. These are eerie salvations, the chances offered by medical science and by poetry. Gehrke guides us, with hand-stitched wisdom, through suffering and toward a healing that requires giving thanks for what others have given so that we may live." --Peggy Shumaker

"What I like most about the poems of Steve Gehrke is that while they're finished, they're not complete. There's always something left undone for me to do, so that when I've read one I feel like I've been inside of it with him. Making this possible takes both skill and what I want to call an amiability on the part of the poet--the willingness to invite a reader in, and the skill to leave room for that. It makes the reading a joy." --Miller Williams

Steve Gehrke recently graduated from the Creative Writing Program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. In 1998, he was awarded a fellowship to study at Bucknell University through the Stadler Semester for Younger Poets. He has worked as an editor for The Corresponder: A Fan Letter on Minnesota Writers and Mankato Poetry Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals, including South Dakota Review, Defined Providence, Chiron Review and Midwest Quarterly.