It is conceptual freshness, and a beautiful instinct for emergent shape, that makes this poetry radioactive. Robbins can spin a hitherto undiscovered cosmos out of a single, wayward proposition, but he never loses footing in the radiant, mortal, given world. Richest invention is tempered by submission to the textures of material and social and ethical life. What more can one ask of a book of poems? -- Linda Gregerson The poems are grounded in the geography of the American west-iots seasons, its people, its destruction-and lifted by the music Robbins coaxes out of the language. They reveal a sympathy with nature and a passion for humane awareness in a culture which often seems to tell us merely to consume and, "Be happy you know nothing. -- William Trowbridge

Body Turn to Rain brings together work from Robbins five previous collections, plus forty new poemsthat continue his wise meditation upon the American experience in this time, with all its variation, expanse, history, clownishness, beauty, and uncertainty. The book represents a way station in the life work of a thoughtful and finely tuned sensibility such as come among us all too rarely. And it is comprised of poems that walk out to meet you as though you were a friend.