In this stunning new collection-his first in five years-acclaimed poet Daniel Mark Epstein, whom Donald Hall praised for "a vision as tortured and powerful as early Robert Lowell," returns at the top of his form with new and challenging visions. Epstein's finely meshed net gathers it all in: Ronald Reagan ("On the Official Biography of Ronald Reagan"), Houdini ("Magic for Houdini"), a son's first smile ("The Code"), and the execution of Timothy McVeigh ("The Times: June 7, 2001"). Once again this master of language and vivid imagery explores the nature of time's passing and the triumphant power of the natural world-bringing into the fray the poets and history-makers of the past and present centuries. Epstein is that rare poet blessed with the capacity to register and record-as he does in "The Solar Eclipse in the Luxembourg Gardens," — ". . . the simultaneity/Of city, sun, moon and the human eye."

"A satiric and searing collection of poetry obsessed with television, oceans, Jewish history, and time. In Shifting Baseline Syndrome, Aaron Kreuter asks the hard questions: will the Anthropocene have a laugh track? Is it okay to marry your eighteenth cousin? How different would the world look from outside the life-frame of the human? What is it like to have an acid trip in a porta potty? Is it the end . . . of Earth? Of capitalism? Of television? Throughout Kreuter’s sophomore collection, the TV remote is never far. Shifting Baseline Syndrome is both searching and searing, veering between satire and sincerity, history and prophecy, and human and non-human worlds. As the end looms, Kreuter demonstrates why we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done: hoping, for once, that the series finale will be good."--