This book is a document of a particular world, real, wrenched from the poet's life, as if written with a gun to his head or a spike through his heart. Reading it is like opening a damp newspaper wrapped around a big fish just caught, fins glistening, scales shining, one rhymed eye open and looking right at you, daring you to eat the whole thing. " Dorianne Laux, author of The Book of Men