I have long admired the work of B. H. Fairchild, since I discovered his exquisite third book, ?The Art of the Lathe, ?through to this newest collection, ?An Ordinary Life, which is an extraordinary glimpse into the lives of those who people our world.?These are sepia narratives lit by his storyteller's voice, still haunted by postwar America, its baseball and washing machines and linoleum, his father's machine shop in Kansas and 'the chrome glamour of trailer hitches, ' and the fortitude and dignity of his working people, the ones who make the world go around–I love these poems for their humor and their precise, taut, delicate diction, their fascination with metal, their shadowy small-town ambiance and their simple honesty. If we are 'lost in the great puzzle' of our lives, we are found here in our most unguarded moments, in our longest nights and deepest days, lifted up by this poetry's hard-won beauty.–Dorianne Laux, author of Only as the Day Is Long