"For all of us who knew Kevin McIlvoy as a peerless fiction writer and miraculous teacher, here is the posthumous gift of his first poetry collection. ... Mc was a musician who found his truest instrumentin words. Meditating on love, addiction, family, [and] distance, the poems trace the dances we make, the songs we sing--the grit of the blues, twang of steel guitar, howl of harmonica--our haunted history as a nation. Yet the wild beguiling music of this work is all [McIlvoy's] own: a dazzling dance in which 'together we sweeten'"--Sheila Fiona Black--