Idiopaths

The poems in this book provide a vision of a world fallen nearly apart, but not completely, and there’s the metaphysical rub. By all accounts—the doomed family, the material detritus, the ruination of nature—we deserve the full-blown apocalypse. Its absence is eerie but ultimately instructive, in a punishing way. This is a book that takes the reader not down an inescapable hole but through a physical and spiritual darkness, if not to the light then dimly to the lesser dark. This is a stark and electric book, full of honesty, intelligence, and a kind of grace. -Maurice Manning