Had me hooked by the time I reached the fifth poem . . . salt-of-the-earth lyricism worth simmering over. Reading it felt like watching the morning mist hovering over my grandparents' backyard creek burn away.-- "(Easton, PA) Express-Times"
One of the best books I've read in years. In a style that's brash, offbeat, tough minded, and big hearted, these poems explore the fundamental mysteries of love between parent and child, self and other, self and world.-- "Alan Shapiro"
Tender beyond belief, uncannily lyrical, morbid and funny and smart, Cox is a master poet of the mystery of presence.-- "Tony Hoagland"
There's a gravity and a sorrowful wisdom in Mark Cox's new poems that make the work of most of the other poets of his generation seem frivolous.-- "David Wojahn"
These poems are well-crafted and for me, more importantly, well-dreamt. I felt ghosts of William Stafford and Rilke smiling as Cox chased his life through its convolutions. This is not a light romp. There are tombstones and heartache, lonely truckers and the achingly beautiful and transient natural world. . . .This is a book for those unafraid to do the work of living and remembering. It is well worth the sweat and the risk."-- "The Cafe Review"
This collection teems with rich images and rings with a vibrant voice.-- "Charlotte Observer"
Unflinching and beautifully made, these poems seem cynical only at first glance--then perplexed and tender.-- "Leslie Ullman"
Vivid memory intertwines with a rigorously envisioned present and future. Cox has touched on these matters in earlier books, but not so consistently or wish such uncanny thematic force. He speaks across a huge range or subject and feeling, from layered fury to astringent violence to lamentation, from guarded hopefullness to affirmations at once quiet and stirring. It is, altogether, an astonishing and moving tour de force.-- "Tar River Poetry"