Of his previous collection, the American Book Review wrote: McIntosh's imagination is so vivid that the primary response to [his poetry] is delight. In this new collection McIntosh ventures further into the realms of imaginative invention, returning with diverse arrangements of weird musical instruments and catalogs of improbable events. In a seemingly simple postmodern gesture, McIntosh makes what in most peoples hands are gimmicks into writing that is truly heartfelt, genuine and intriguingly strange. A number of writers and poets might come to mind when reading Forty-Nine Guaranteed Ways to Escape Death as well as McIntoshs earlier workBorges, Auster, Collinsbut no one else has so amusingly plumbed our unconscious and the melding of dream and reality as has McIntosh; his forays into experience are painful at times, hilariously bizarre, always poignant as well as provocative, and unique in their formal qualities. His is a Mbius strip world in which we become aware of our primal fears and wishes through the oddnesses of an everyday consciousness tinged with ironic goofiness.