Travels of the Angel of Sorrow

Praise for Travels of the Angel of Sorrow

“These tales of plague evoke the Polish villages of I.B. Singer’s short stories – and Durer’s engraving, Night, Death, and the Devil. As the Angel of Sorrow makes himself comfortable at a tavern in a village scoured by the Black Death, he witnesses the daily travails of plague-haunted souls, ‘his wings brushing the floor when he moved.’ These are elegant, haunting poems – with flashes of wit and humor — fit for our own dance of death. Essential reading for our time.”

Nancy Schoenberger,
author of Long Like a River and Dangerous Muse.

“Travels of the Angel of Sorrow comes alive in the hand. A book so filled with verve and vision, a feathered wing brushing my cheek as I read might not surprise me. This Angel listens to stories and tells a few its own and, when pressed, shares what we may need to know in our own time of sorrow: ‘The single blessing/ Of heaven is that no one remembers what they’ve lost.’”

Donna Hilbert,
author of Gravity: New & Selected Poems.

“In a narrative of vivid, electric scenes, the companion of sorrow abides this poet’s deep loss of the world as he knew it. Its verse is soaked to the bone with a raw vulnerability that we can’t let go of — it often astonishes. There has been no better time for this book because this hurt and healing are known to each of us. The Angel of Sorrow abides nearby, a presence once touched, ever felt.”

Christopher Shade,
author of The Good Mother of Marseille and Shield the Joyous.