The Cruelty Virtues

Seth Brady Tucker’s third book of poems, The Cruelty Virtues, probes the edges of the culture of masculinity as it investigates how we create our own “flawed men” amid the seemingly depthless expectations for violence and toughness. These poems uncover how our predatory approaches to nature and culture were borne of this contemporary masculine resurgence and the cynical conflict over gender. These poems are filled with hope, however, and give each reader insight into how joy, empathy, and love will survive even as we face the new masculine authoritarianism evident in American politics. His poems are immediate, sensual, and muscular and often bounce from the tenderness of a bee protecting the hive to desperate voices of men who have lost perspective when it comes to patriotism, duty, and war. His speakers can be hard-nosed, obstinate, and ironic as he manages the “worker mentality” that is part and parcel to our current post-capitalistic culture, but can also appreciate the way a bee sting is the ultimate sacrifice for a higher purpose. These poems move from beehive to parking garage to VA hospital beds to cults of masculinity to bio-engineered pesticide deserts with ease, and his experiences in the proving grounds of masculine cultural perversity (as an Army paratrooper, ranch hand, acetylene pipe-cutter, farmer) pair satisfactorily with these moral inquiries that come from his work as a professor and bee-keeper.

Poetry collection, war literature, nature poetry, war poetry, veteran poetry.