These poems disarm me. I come to them like any reader might, "bowing to the terrible world," only to find Rothman whispering "Now you must give up those cares for charms." Through it all, these fine poems set me to shivering with recognition and laughing aloud at the many and varied ways the poet turns his wry plow at the end of a line's furrow. Rothman has tremendous control of music, tone, and angle of approach to his subjects, proof "A man knows how to sing/when he has to." ~ Chris Ransick author of "Language for the Living and the Dead" David Rothman's latest collection effervesces with intelligence of the freshest kind-poems one reads not only for pleasure, but for their insights and revelations, as well. Rich with dark humor (as in the devastating sendup of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets in "A Letter Home") or with grief (as in the ambitious and profoundly sad meditation, "The Icicle"), the poems prove to the reader again and again that there can be tenderness in irony, beauty in disillusionment. If Rothman can claim that "darkness is a spark of sunlight," believe him, because these poems are proof positive of precisely that. ~ Marilyn L. Taylor University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Wisconsin Poet Laureate, 2009-2010