Drawing its energy from society’s underbelly-the dim corner booths of bars, the stalls of public bathrooms, the thickets of unkempt parks-Vaughan’s book is part prose poem, part fractured sonnet, part Whitmanian love-cry. ‘What were your last thoughts, Ophelia? Were / you loved enough? Will I ever know when I am?’ When this poet speaks, we are compelled by the plaintive urgency of eros in his voice. On the edge of a low-lit Interstate highway somewhere between Los Angeles and New York City, Addicts & Basements yawps and pivots and veers, praising its own wreckage. -Dorianne Laux, author of The Book of Men