On Wrong Turns by Will Keever is a poetry collection examining moments of transition — the phase change of decisions into identity; the intersections of memory, place, and emotion.
The book traces the path of the author moving from the quiet embrace of rural mountain life to one of the centers of the universe in New York City. Documenting the moments when these two spheres collide and coexist, the city becomes a new kind of wilderness where the poems channel stark reality and surreal beauty; the mundane and the extraordinary.
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With language as lush and varied as the landscapes it describes, On Wrong Turns invites readers to explore their own journeys of transformation, discovering how the places we inhabit shape who we become in an existence that often feels grounded yet disjointed and otherworldly.
From the reflections on the remnants of a white-tailed deer to haunting echoes of subway tracks to the ethereal glow of fireflies in a city park, each piece offers a meditation on the ways we navigate our personal and collective histories, finding meaning in the small, often overlooked moments that define our existence.
This collection is a poignant reminder that every turn — whether right or wrong — leads us to deeper understanding and connection.
What They’re Saying About The Book
On Wrong Turns is a sun-bleached pile of bones. It is a box of CDs on the sidewalk for the taking. It is "a bar that used to be a coffin factory" and a 100-meter sprint against the sun. A beautiful distraction. In this collection there is a longing to run toward something, and then away from it. And then to keep running until even infinity can’t keep up.
— McCaela Prentice, author of Junk Drawer Heart
Keever is a poet of rust and redemption. Herein, he taxonomizes the everyday topography of empire and its haunting transfigurations – a terrain of ambulances, credit card chips, birdshot, economists, red eye flights, horsepower, billboards, mercury-rich cod, bunkers, and the latest seltzer – while beautifully conjuring the potent counterforce of the natural world, mesmerizing and mud soft. The wayfaring, meditative, cinematic, sensorially intoxicating poems of On Wrong Turns are a saw of bone to cut your heart in two. Keever characterizes the crisis of the contemporary and conspires with his bestiary to drag us from city street back into the understory and borderlessness of wilderness, skulled and ravened, wherein "milkweed grows at the altar" and "Earth [makes] its offensive" and "even in the time of GPS [we might] still listen to the past." And it works; his songs of severance, silence, and storms make us again more lucid, interstellar, and lit from the inside out.
— Dawn Lonsinger, author of Whelm
With Keever as our trusted guide, we “dive to the bottom, into the marrow” of our strange human existence. On Wrong Turns is a bonesong written on the backs of leaves. We feel the wind on our back as we traverse the ever-shifting, ever-murmuring American landscape. A poet of loving consciousness and healing imagination, Keever holds his ear to the pulse of the earth, taking it all in so that he "can come home and describe it to you."
— Latif Askia Ba, author of The Choreic Period
EVENTS FOR ON WRONG TURNS
Brooklyn Book Launch
Friday, December 13th, 7 p.m.
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Colorado Book Launch
Details TBA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Will Keever is a self-taught writer who grew up in the leatherstocking region of New York State. After studying biology & chemistry at St. Lawrence University, he spent time wandering the country with extended stints in the Colorado Rockies and the Uinta Mountains of Utah, before being called back to the Adirondacks in Northern New York.
Blessed with indecision, his resume has included jobs as varied as an Emergency Medical Technician, bartender, landscaper, zipline guide, substitute teacher, medical marijuana extraction technician, farmhand, and copy editor.
Now a resident of Brooklyn, New York, he can be found on stage with his improv comedy troupe, absconding to the Rockaways, or petting good dogs in Prospect Park. He enjoys every sandwich.
Will’s work has been described as ‘Psychedelia Americana,’ and these days he likes to think of it as documenting the teleplay of his senses – combining his imagination and experiences observing the natural world juxtaposed to urban living. Any place where humans and nature coexist is of interest, whether it be a national park or an empty, overgrown lot.
This is Will’s debut book of poems.