Robert Farrell's poems describe a dramatic enveloping— speakers are swallowed and flooded, lungs and voices become occupied terrain, high rises and lighthouses peek in and out of the fog and sunlight. The poet is so protective of the worlds he summons, watching over the pines and awaiting the return of yellow dust each spring, that one feels wholly in love with each turn of phrase as it is deliberately offered as a gift to the reader. The meditations are bookish, but their lack of terminal punctuation keeps them endlessly inviting and aphoristic. Lastly, Farrell is unsparing in his assessment of how bodies gather— plastic citizens, the communal falling of stakeholders, the armed Bohemians, the assembly of green succulents defying winter— and he offers us scenes of dizzying disharmony that prove to be the stuff of unlikely wonder. A feverish, philosophical collection of poems.
— Megan Fernandes, author of The Kingdom and After
