This is a story, writes Luke Hathaway, of transformation. It is a death. It is a birth. Birth, of course, is very terrible: what can survive it? His fourth collection, and first since Years, Months, and DaysNew York Times Best Poetry Book of 2018, The Affirmations is a work of trans poetics in the most radical sense. Begun in motherhood, in an experience of birth as an experience of affirmation, and continued through Hathaway's transition, The Affirmations is a rerelationing with self and other, elder and myth. It's a book about what happened when Hathaway fell in love - and about what happened when love shot the messenger.