Accepting the Disaster
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014
 

“David Orr’s 10 Favorite Poetry Books of 2014,” The New York Times Book Review

“What’s the Best Book, New or Old, You Read This Year?” Adam Kirsch, The New York Times Book Review 

“Best Books of 2014,” Anthony Domestico, Commonweal Magazine

"Books of the Year,” A.E. Stallings, Adam Kirsch, The Times Literary Supplement

“The Best Books We Read in 2014,” Austin Allen, Lit Genius

Reviews

"Accepting the Disaster is an ominous, sometimes terrifying book. Mehigan’s poems . . . appear to look at contemporary America in their rear-view mirror . . . with the sort of authority only hindsight ordinarily affords.”
                   —Declan Ryan, The Times Literary Supplement

"Mehigan is one of America’s most gifted formalists. . . . 'The Orange Bottle,' in particular, gives new life to the tired compliment 'tour de force.'"
                   —David Orr, The New York Times Book Review

"The book I most looked forward to getting my hands on this year was Joshua Mehigan’s second collection, Accepting the Disaster. This is, poem after poem, one of the best volumes of recent years."
                   —A. E. Stallings, The Times Literary Supplement

"Joshua Mehigan’s Accepting the Disaster is the rare new book of poetry that is entirely alive, entirely aloft."
                   —Adam Kirsch, The New Republic

“The most generous, deeply felt, and technically ingenious collection to appear in English in years . . . ”
                   —Michael Lista, National Post

The Antioch Review, Alex M. Frankel

The Hopkins Review, Rachel Hadas

Body, Justin Quinn

Valparaiso Poetry Review, D.A. Jeremy Telman

Irish Independent, John Boland

The Philadelphia Review of Books, Jason Schneiderman

The Manchester Review, Ian Pople

Coal Hill Review, Jason Barry

Commonweal, Anthony Domestico

The Quarterly Conversation, Patrick Kurp
 

Advance Praise

“At nearly every turn Joshua Mehigan makes the right choices—imaginatively and formally—in his exciting new collection Accepting the Disaster. And they're choices that could never be anticipated—uncanny, really, and thoroughly invigorating. Surprise and inevitability, that is the mark of a first-rate artist, and Mehigan is nothing if not that: breadth of intelligence, freshness of invention, skill at the wheel are everywhere to be found in these pages. The man's got it, in spades.” 
                    —August Kleinzahler, author of Hotel Oneira

“These poems are built to last, and they will. It's the beautiful authority of the writing and its music, and of the deep disinterested pity and respect for these people and their things and places, poem after wonderful poem. The uncanny great poem ‘The Sponge,’ and, say, ‘The Cement Plant,’ ‘The Polling Place’ and ‘The Smokestack,’ and that amazing tour de force title poem are just instances, how strange, how sweet, of the mastery.”   
                   —David Ferry, National Book Award-winning author of Bewilderment