In his plain-spoken lyrics and dramatic monologues, Michael Burns digs at the marrow. His poems-in formal and free verse-are quick, incisive, and always capable of revealing the dark whimsies of fate and the pain of our own actions and inactions.

These poems travel to Casqui mounds in the Arkansas Delta, traffic-clogged urban streets, a wasteland in Oklahoma, and Faulkner’s Rowan Oak. They assume the voices of others so convincingly that we find ourselves face to face with hunters, philanderers, husbands, a Union general, a Snopes, and even a version of God.

Gathering the images of each place, crafting lines in clear, unpretentious language, Burns comes across new knowledge, confronting the ever-present mysteries and the ways the mind loves to lie to itself.