Daniel Klawitter is a poet capable of great sweetness and formal grace, a poet who can imagine that “We are little dramas encased in flesh— // As we discover the heart of silence,” but do not be deceived. Klawitter is also a poet of sly humor, who imagines communists responding to Marx’s comments about modest loving that “In the midst of class struggle / there’s always time to snuggle.” But again—do not be deceived. At the root, Klawitter is a passionate poet who loves life deeply but also embraces his own complicated faith. This passion bursts through again and again, in cries of grief— “O god, my grief is a child / I hold as a thief / might hold his last night / of freedom…” and in sympathy for the sufferings of others, where “You might see every wound / in the world as your own.” He also directly faces that sympathy’s political realities, from suburban greed and anomie to misguided immigration policies to industrial accidents. A passionate and loving anti-fundamentalist, he can in one breath say “God, I hope the end / of the world is nigh / for these miniscule men / and their unconscious / self-hatreds,” and then in the next tell us, following William Sloane Coffin Jr., that “religion is a crutch, / but what makes you think / you don’t limp?” We are fortunate to have among us such a rich poet, who quarrels so meaningfully with himself, illuminating thereby our struggles as well as his own.—David J. Rothman, author of The Book of Catapults and Part of the Darkness