Shann Ray brings to American poetry a voice that is at once rugged and unapologetically vulnerable. In these poems, Ray writes with the same incisive eye that has won him so much praise for his fiction, but with an even sharper ear. Like any decent bluesman, Shann knows when to wail, when to whisper, and when to let the silences do their own damn work. Here, folks, is an able and true 'vessel for the song of this world.' -- John Murillo, author of Up Jump the Boogie

In Shann Ray’s collection, Balefire, one senses always the poet’s tender regard for family as well as the forces of nature that flesh, flame, and fray each human relationship,