The Price of Survival in 'Juda Goat'

Already a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, as well as a co-host of The Poet Salon podcast, it’s hard to believe that Judas Goat is Gabrielle Bates’s debut collection. The two-score poems within display a sensitive and assured voice and a candid exploration of human relationships and the self via mythologies, philosophies, and vulnerable narratives. The title suggests the stakes of such an excavation: the ostensibly domesticated Judas goat guides other animals to their end yet remains free and safe—or relatively free and safe, with a reality that is far more complex.