The View from Jackass Hill

"The View From Jackass Hill" is a book in which the poems both eulogize and celebrate. They weep and sing. They sing of and mourn for family, friends and poets: Keats, Wyler, Shinder, Carruth, and others. Geographically, the book is rooted in the east--New York, New Hampshire, Maine--and travels west, to Colorado. Thematically, it is a delineation of loss, both personal and national: the death of loved ones, the death in war. It is, in short, a lament for the erosion of the American Dream. Yet it is a book that insists on "Making Up with Milton."
"Here is a poet with a real voice, brave and original. He also rhetorically asks questions that hurt. The Jack poems are a triumph, and the use of film imagery and Visa cards attests to his post-Modernism. This is a collection of friendship and vodka, and I can only say, "Enjoy" "--Robert Phillips, Series Judge