"AE Hines dares to imagine a new Eden, as his speaker finds himself 'middle-aged and queer, ' in poems that weave sound and image into tightly crafted narratives. Whether confronting betrayal and loss, sex and desire, or even environmental collapse, threads of hope and gratitude run throughout these verses, as does the speaker's anxiety about the fragility of what binds. 'Perhaps you too have done this, ' he asks, 'Found yourself awake on the edge // of so much happiness you fear fate / might intervene?' In plain-spoken language, Hines transforms simple, everyday acts into tender and moving lyrics, offering surprising journeys and closing lines that continue to inspire. We find a poet willing to risk sentimentality without collapsing into sentiment. A seeker willing to risk blasphemy in his personal search for truth." Dorianne Laux, author of Life on Earth

"AE Hines keeps giving us what we want as readers--to fall through the holes of the everyday into deeper meaning. Playful and adept in their workings, these poems are portals to hidden rooms, fields, galaxies. Even if they begin with pigeon, airplane, beloved, we find ourselves led to the Garden of All Things, the primordial place of loss and desire, taking our own bite of the apple." Danusha Laméris, author of Bonfire Opera

AE Hines is a poet of violence, wit, and the brutish assumptions of fidelity. He has a gift for describing the natural world in this latter-day garden: the pigeon's "steel / petticoat and gray patrician gown"; the tulip "boozy and voluptuous"; "a dawn congregation / of ravens" in snow. Hines understands that "hope can be given away," a truth part openness, part diminishment; Adam in the Garden is a subtle, skillful collection. Randall Mann, author of Deal: New and Selected

The world is fading. The Father is fading. AE Hines's Adam in the Garden is here to herald a new age where we "shoo/that sweet-talking serpent," accepting "nothing untrue," taking the tremulous steps of adoption, carrying a new vision for the son of men across a million unknown dangers. To build and name a new world, we each must, like Adam, recall "all the men/[we've] been" and push beyond what we have known, "edging close/ to discovery." Hines will leave you longing for a paradise regained. J.D. Isip, author of Kissing the Wound