The Blaze of the Paul unfolds a world lush and rank as a rain forest, alluring and lethal as a sea anemone. Mark McMorris writes of the Americas, the Caribbean, and other sites of conquest and colonization, mingling the personal and political, the present and past on pages filled with the language of parting, remembering, promise, and loss. On reading Mark McMorris's poetry, the Voice Literary Supplement has said, "the punch is a stunning one, landing its blow with such finesse you are surprised you didn't see it coming.... McMorris credibly sounds the mature intonations of a late-career poet when he speaks of 'the smell of the world in its dotage coming to roost.' Poetic equilibrium of this order is a rare thing when managing such charged material, but in a young poet it is cause for small amazement.