Like everything else in this wrenching, dazzling volume, memory is mediated by wit and skepticism. These are poems of great beauty and authentic pain, as well as a wincing humor. The world in these poems comes at the reader as a mesmerizing swarm of images, which sting as much as they please. Their cumulative effect is a kind of sorrowful wonder. This is a book you will not forget. Daniel Lawless is the founder and editor of Plume: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry, the Plume anthologies and co-founder of the poetry press, Plume Editions. He now resides in St. Petersburg, Florida.