"In one of the startling and bracing poems in his new collection, Mark Irwin writes, 'I believed that language could save us from the temporal.' It might be said that all lyric poems derive from this heartbreaking and Quixotic longing. Yet Irwin is a writer undaunted by the lyric's insufficiency. He makes from our confusion and bewilderment a poetry of propulsive language, imaginative depth, and a wounded moral authority that recalls the work of Milosz, Herbert, and Szymborska. In other words, Mark Irwin fashions poems that matter."–David Wojahn (1/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)
