Goodbye, Baby

Poetry February 2026 ISBN 978-1-961127-21-0 98 pages Softcover, 6" x 9"

Goodbye, Baby, the author's first book of poetry in six years, is arguably his most personal—a taut and elegiac sequence of grief and loss, but also of lambent memory, of gratitude, of joy, delivered with lightning strikes of Brewer's wry humor amidst his signature brand of darkness.

"Goodbye, Baby is an elemental book, a collection of poems that distills chaotic experience down to its most essential ingredients: food, drink, blood, wit, travel, song, love for animals, especially a good dog named Lucy. This is a volume of twelves, of completed circles, of the faces of clocks, an American sort of twelve-line ghazal emerging, each poem an egg contained perfectly within its shell. You will never forget this loved dog and the words she brought forth from one of our finest poets."—Jesse Graves

grief humor love

From the Book

After the many weeks gone, I was back in my own country.
The final flight on time, I made the call we'd arranged.
Something wasn't right. Robin couldn't hear me over the din,
or it was too late, or … I would be returning to a dark house.
That was that. Hours later, I watched my shuttle mate greeted
by wife and terrier at his front door. Then on into the night,
my unlit country lane. As the driver turned into the long drive,
I blinked in disbelief: a mirage of porch light. My breath caught,
and I knew I'd been given a gift I could not repay, and yes,
I was jagged from travel, but as I fumbled the key—barking
furious inside—as I dropped bawling to my knees, Lucy leaping,
yelping, all over me, it was the happiest moment of my life.

🙙

What Others Say

Gaylord Brewer's magnificent Goodbye, Baby is everything a reader could want from a collection of poems. In this finely wrought chain of intensely felt and atmospheric eclogues, Brewer is the ever-aware shepherd regarding the passing natural world so keenly the reader can feel the globe turning page by page. These poems are full of our human and humane questions: as we age, as those we love age and pass, what will become of all it has taken us a lifetime to know, feel, and love? Damn. I don't know how long it's been since I've read a book so freaking good. This collection is a triumph!

— Kathleen Driskell , Kentucky Poet Laureate 2025-2026

Goodbye, Baby is an elemental book, a collection of poems that distills chaotic experience down to its most essential ingredients: food, drink, blood, wit, travel, song, love for animals, especially a good dog named Lucy. This is a volume of twelves, of completed circles, of the faces of clocks, an American sort of twelve-line ghazal emerging, each poem an egg contained perfectly within its shell. You will never forget this loved dog and the words she brought forth from one of our finest poets.

— Jesse Graves , author of <em>Merciful Days</em>

About the Author

Gaylord Brewer

The most recent of Gaylord Brewer's eighteen books of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, criticism, and cookery is the essay collection Before the Storm Takes It Away (Red Hen, 2024). His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry and The Bedford Introduction to Literature. His many international residencies include Hawthornden Castle (Scotland) and the Global Arts Village (India), and he has taught in Russia, Kenya, England, and the Czech Republic. Brewer was awarded a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship in 2009. He is a native of Louisville, Kentucky, earned a Ph.D. from Ohio State University, and has been a professor at Middle Tennessee State University for more than three decades.