Mark Conway is offering us a long letter to the dead, an appeal for aconnection beyond the grave (“The Romans had a way / to talk to the dead:bring them / a bowl of blood . . .”). In poem after remarkable poem, Conway—at once sublime and profane—conjures, resurrects, cajoles, addresses,pleads with, and finally accepts, a lost (or imagined?) brother; heaven isinvoked, redemption sought and rejected. We are all lost, these poems remindus, and yet “How beautiful was the city of the living this afternoon . . .”- Nick FlynnReading these poems, I hear the clatter of my own footsteps through citiesof hieroglyphs and pinball machines—a paradise run-through with ghosts,whom Conway conjures with grit and grace. Dreaming Man, Face Downhits me in the head and heart with image after stunning image, and thehard true language of love and regret. - Tracy K. SmithSomeone dies - it's an anti-miracle. He was here and now he is gone.How is this possible? Deep, persistent and comic too, Mark Conwaywrestles with the phenomenal entity of absence without giving an inch.- Fanny HoweThese poems are electric with indignation and holy rage and love for the“hyper-beauty” of what and who is doomed to die: everything we know andevery one. Oh Lord, read this book. It made me laugh out loud and put myhead in my hands. It made me look out the window and be glad.- Marie Howe