Pleasures of the Game

A book of deceptively playful poems, of sparkling surfaces that conceal dark undercurrents. Its subjects include games of all kinds: from schoolyard Double Dutch to the chess match of love, from painters illusions to professional ice hockey, from the stratagems of spies to the life-and-death game we play against the universe. Born in Middletown, Connecticut in 1984, he received an MFA in Poetry from Johns Hopkins University in 2012 and has worked as a book editor, teacher, and digital archivist. He currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he studies and teaches at the University of Cincinnati. The speaker of this book.like all the best speakers in poetry, is a mix of music and contradiction.And this, I have no doubt, is the speaker the reader will follow willingly through this charmed adventure in measure and meaning. -Eavan Boland. Offers a variety of pleasures in what is clearly a win-win situation for writer and reader.a dazzling debut volume. -Charles Martin.