Mormon Boy

Seth Brady Tucker's first poetry collection won the Elixir Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, among a number of other post-publication accolades.

Mormon Boy traces the fault lines between faith, family, masculinity, war, and the American West. These poems move with a storyteller’s swagger and a survivor’s tenderness, blending sharp wit with moments of startling vulnerability. Tucker revisits his upbringing in a strict religious household, the landscapes that shaped him, and the complicated inheritance of belief, shame, rebellion, and love.

What makes the collection stand out is its tonal agility: one moment irreverent, the next devastatingly sincere. Tucker’s voice is unflinching as he interrogates the myths he was raised with, yet generous enough to honor the soldiers and people and places that formed him. The result is a book that feels both intimate and expansive—a coming‑of‑age narrative told through poems that crackle with energy, humor, and emotional intelligence.

War poetry, war literature, western poetry, western literature, PTSD poetry, Veteran poetry.

"A young man goes to a desert war, somehow returns with body and mind intact, and begins to write poems about his experiences. Will they be raw, brutal, all but impossible to read? Actually, no. Seth Tucker looks into the abyss, but it's a 'pretty abyss, as one of these poems says, because life rendered with feeling is always beautiful. Tucker embraces his subject but transcends it; a pleasure to read, these poems show poets how great poems are written."

—David Kirby

"Can eyeballing Steve Martin kill a person? Is the baptismal font really for drowning little boys who just don't cut it? Is the trapdoor spider important? Can a woman's great ass save us? These deeply weird, dark, at-times-hilarious, war-torn poems, like a mule ride, are: 'unpredictable, exhilarating, uncomfortable, and silly' (I admit it—I giggled). And yet. When Kafka said: A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul; he had Seth Tucker's Mormon Boy in mind —for with electrified language, grit and pathos this stunning debut collection commands love of raw humanity, unhinged from superstition."

—Jane Springer

"Seth Tucker takes you on a trip to the outer limits of our time—to Baghdad and back again, and what he sees will leave you stunned but amazed that a human being could be so resilient, so passionate, and so open to the beauty and terror of the world. Here is a true Romantic—as if Keats and Byron had ironed out their differences and decided to take off for parts unknown. This book is an avalanche of images-tender, terrifying, and and rich as the the landscapes they describe."

—Barbara Hamby