Poetry as hero, not heroic poetry. Just masterful verse which performs extraordinary work in extraordinary circumstances.

“Adkins’ straightforward language serves to disarm before the gut punch; his clear-headed storytelling and attention to detail adds another important voice to what we know of war and war’s leavings, and how all who survive it are changed. These are people and poems I will carry with me for a long time, and gladly.”

With clear-headed storytelling and attention to detail, Adkins adds an important voice capturing the mundanity, brutality, fear, boredom, and banality of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. When the importance of poetry is questioned, the poems in Dispatches from the FOB by Paul David Adkins provide an unequivocal answer.

A poetry book about alienation and inclusion. With imperviousness and ferocity, this famous Mexican ghost crisscrosses the northern border and makes both nations her own.

The ghost woman, la Llorona, detailed in this series of persona poems, will enchant readers into an eerie empathy for her vulnerabilities and desires, and even her vicious faults.