Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back explores the question of how to live in a natural landscape that offers beauty while being consumed by industry, and in an economy that offers material benefits while denying dignity, meaning and a voice to many in order to satisfy the outsized appetites of the few.

A cri de coeur from a poet who has long celebrated the voices of working people, the collection also grapples with why anyone, in this era so profoundly lacking in grace, might want to make poems-or any kind of art. But the keen sense of justice that drives the collection is tempered by the poet’s reluctance to take himself too seriously: Centuries without the benefit / of my presence / have to be made up for / by my words.

The poet brings the perspective of age to our current troubled existence, with the reminder that as a society and as individuals we’ve faced perilous times before, and that our shared mortality links us more than circumstances and politics divide us.