O Body

A collection of moving and tender poems that delves into questions of masculinity, fatherhood, home, and learning to live in and love one's own body.

In his second full-length poetry collection, Chicago-born poet Dan "Sully" Sullivan considers the male body--its momentum and privilege when moving through the world, but also its softness and vulnerability. As the poems unfold and questions unravel, the book challenges wider social systems that uphold patriarchal notions of masculinity, seeking to achieve a new register of compassion, of self-love.

O Body is also a migration narrative, navigating the physical distances between cities--the speaker's movement between Chicago and his new home in Bloomington--and beyond that, the expansive, immeasurable distances within the self. Cityscapes come alive on the page and relationships bloom and deepen as Sully explores love, fatherhood, and family; here, traditional assumptions regarding masculinity and beauty are called into question through the speaker's tenderhearted wondering.

As more and more people awaken to the realization that the patriarchy oppresses people of all genders, Sully's work in O Body offers a much-needed narrative of that shifting perspective. This deeply self-aware and big-hearted book holds space for reflecting on one's physical body and interiority: the complex relationship between the two as well as their intricate and often fraught connections to the wider community and the places we call home.

Dan "Sully" Sullivan holds an MFA & MA from Indiana University. His poems & performances have been featured on HBO Def Poetry Jam, WGN Morning News, & National Public Radio. Sully is a three-time Chicago Poetry Slam Champion, a recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Poetry Award, the Earl S Ho Award for Excellence in Teaching Creative Writing, & an Indiana University Writer in South Asia Recipient. His poems have recently appeared in Habitat Lit Mag, Southside Weekly, & The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks. Sully's first full-length book of poems, The Blue Line Home, is available from EM-Press.