Winner of the 2018 Grayson Books Poetry Contest, Edward Wilson's In a Rich Country is a very American collection of poems that speak clearly and eloquently. The poems are tender and sharp, sophisticated but deeply authentic. A variety of people make their appearances in the poems, and one recognizes them as relatives and neighbors. There is real emotional depth to the work here, without reliance on sentimentality. . In a Rich Country is a fitting title for these poems, which spill out quotably from the page "like soft electricity," like "a wound through gauze," "hungry for miracles." Filled with melancholy and wonder they lead us through years of growing up in America, with a generosity that is almost, but not quite, optimistic, and specific details that are always both recognizable and surprising. --Peter Meinke, Poet Laureate of Florida What a rarity among the myriad poetry collections of the early twenty-first century: a clear and musical voice that speaks consistently of things other than itself, of times other than its own, of values collective rather than self-serving. --Stephen Corey, editor of The Georgia Review These wonderful poems are tender, acerbic, dramatic, sophisticated, interested in language in just the way that we hope poetry will be, deeply attentive to specific people and places, admirably capable of self-critique, and mindful of death. In other words, they're what I think of as "real poems." --Patrick Donnelly, author of Little-Known Operas