This, Patrick Lawler's second book-length collection, is his follow-up to the critically praised "A Drowning Man Is Never Tall Enough," and affirmation that he is truly one of the up and coming poets of his generation. Restricted by nothing, he lives on the edge without hesitation or fear. He is a poet for our time. Praise for "A Drowning Man Is Never Tall Enough": "How lovely, to find poetry where I should never have thought to find anything of the kind. Imagine a book with a tarnished title, further soiled by the parenthesis in which it appears. Imagine, in the same vein, that this book is issued by a publisher with the unlucky designation Basfal Books. Now you have what I had when I first laid eyes on (reading a burning book), words already weary unto death with their preening in the lower case. But then one has oneself a look inside at what Mr. Patrick Lawler has wrought -- and sees, blasing back, very life, burning and burning, the mind prudently, but never anxiously, watchful in the shade. Thank God, thank God -- here is a poet. "-- Gordon Lish "Leaving "the mystery intact in every clue," Lawler's first book exposes, shocks and stirs us." -- Newsday "In the case of Patrick Lawler, however, verbal brilliance is put in the service of deep philosophic probing..." -- Booklist "[A Drowning Man Is Never Tall Enough] is the genuine thing, not imitative but full of its own humilities and hubris, as all great literature is. The book is a wonder." -- Bin Ramke "I'm given all sorts of pleasure by such immediate poems as "The Front," such skills as inform "Is (Is Not)," such structural accomplishments as "Stone Music," and -- clearly -- the progressions of the whole final section." -- Philip Booth Patrick Lawler is currently a professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, where he teaches Environmental Writing and Environmental Literature. He also teaches creative writing at LeMoyne College and Onondaga Community College. His poems have appeared in magazines and journals such as "American Poetry Review," "Central Park," "The Iowa Review," "Shenandoah," "Nimrod" and "Northwest Review." His first book of poems, "A Drowning Man Is Never Tall Enough," was published by the University of Georgia Press in 1990.