{"id":4346,"date":"2021-05-17T22:12:25","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T22:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/?page_id=4346"},"modified":"2025-09-25T20:51:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T20:51:41","slug":"atrophy-of-the-boy-who-became-a-wishing-well","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/?page_id=4346","title":{"rendered":"Atrophy Of The Boy Who Became A Wishing Well"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-red-color\">WINNER OF THE THREE MILE HARBOR POETRY PRIZE: PRAISE FOR NATHANIEL BEK&#8217;S <em>ATROPHY<\/em>&#8230;<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"708\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/a-TMH-Book-Cover-Atrophy-Sheridan-front-cover-psd-708x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4309\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/a-TMH-Book-Cover-Atrophy-Sheridan-front-cover-psd-708x1024.jpg 708w, https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/a-TMH-Book-Cover-Atrophy-Sheridan-front-cover-psd-scaled-300x434.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/a-TMH-Book-Cover-Atrophy-Sheridan-front-cover-psd-208x300.jpg 208w, https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/a-TMH-Book-Cover-Atrophy-Sheridan-front-cover-psd-768x1110.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/a-TMH-Book-Cover-Atrophy-Sheridan-front-cover-psd-1063x1536.jpg 1063w, https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/a-TMH-Book-Cover-Atrophy-Sheridan-front-cover-psd-1417x2048.jpg 1417w, https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/a-TMH-Book-Cover-Atrophy-Sheridan-front-cover-psd-scaled.jpg 1771w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 708px) 100vw, 708px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-ce445cafe7023f92366110b357b65dd8 wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;In his collection, <strong><em>Atrophy of the Boy Who Became a Wishing Well,<\/em> <\/strong>Nathaniel C. Bek writes milk, blood, dirt, and earth back into poems. This is not a collection of city-slick wit and flirtation; these poems are pastoral and haunted by family dysfunction, premature rite of passage, and the struggle to survive life\u2019s unrelenting tragedies. Though deeply confessional, Bek provokes the reader asking, \u201cCan you be more than violence\/ More than abuse\/ More than a weapon\u201d and instead \u201cmake scrapes and scars a love letter to the living?\u201d The answers to these questions are critical for our times, our relationships, and our healing.\u201d &#8211; Tamara J. Madison, author of&nbsp; <em>Threed, This Road Not Damascus <\/em>(Trio House Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-e1584a327e409b0f94770185a2f0b5a1 wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>*****<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-8c86f01aa102c4df6874ea17d84dd585 wp-block-paragraph\"><em><strong>\u201cAtrophy of the Boy Who Became A Wishing Well<\/strong><\/em> is a beautiful collection that explores masculinity and the costs of trying to meet its expectations, the freedom in ignoring them.\u201d &#8211; J. Bradley, Best Small Fictions 2019 Winner<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-e1584a327e409b0f94770185a2f0b5a1 wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>*****<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-00ee8638d79f4b9976a202a17d850910 wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;NCBEK&#8217;s poems are grown out of dirt and grass, a rural universe that uncovers the bones under the wheat fields and makes them walk again. The cyclical tragedy of generational curses, violent masculinity, and regret set against the mislead-ingly peaceful bucolia. Here, everything must kill to eat, even a VCR and especially the past. But there is still love and hope, a &#8220;dance floor of pain&#8221; to be found in the stillness. &#8220;There is iron in the soil here,&#8221; NCBEK says in &#8220;Body of Water,&#8221; and so it is with these poems- bad things happened and are still happening and it&#8217;s as if he is asking what will grow from what was lost. Plenty, say these poems.&#8221;- TC, Song Writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-bf4790ac15370761b7d72cff0e6e9123 wp-block-paragraph\">Publication Date: June 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-8057d2927cd967313026268961ad0656 wp-block-paragraph\">ISBN: 9780998340654<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-8e22d61916d23c4087de51057a522629 wp-block-paragraph\">Pages: 76<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Trade paperback:  7 x10<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>BUY HERE ON AMAZON:<\/strong> <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0998340650\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"www.amazon.com\/dp\/0998340650\">www.amazon.com\/dp\/0998340650<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-white-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-b05bc0af45c5fac0c478c43d34906bf2 wp-block-paragraph\">[<strong>BUY HERE ON AMAZON:<\/strong> <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0998340650\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"www.amazon.com\/dp\/0998340650\">www.amazon.com\/dp\/0998340650<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WINNER OF THE THREE MILE HARBOR POETRY PRIZE: PRAISE FOR NATHANIEL BEK&#8217;S ATROPHY&#8230; &#8220;In his collection, Atrophy of the Boy Who Became a Wishing Well, Nathaniel C. Bek writes milk, blood, dirt, and earth back into poems. This is not a collection of city-slick wit and flirtation; these poems are pastoral and haunted by family &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4346","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4346"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5533,"href":"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4346\/revisions\/5533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3mileharborpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}