Plumpp’s new poems show his extraordinary sense of the movement of speech and the poetic line, his dazzling metaphors, and his ability to turn language inside out and upside down by looking within the words and rhythms of what we commonly say without thinking. In his poetic versions of the blues, he brings something new into American poetry both technically and spiritually. Plumpp’s blues narratives are a poetic form and a dialogue between poet and subject–they are unlike anything else in American poetry: a vital, passionate, haunting poetry meant to be read and spoken and sung.