The four splendid and drastically individuated poets included in An Uncommon Accord manage, paradoxically enough, to create a harmony and a conversation among one another worthy of the great string quartets. The tensions between them are not violent but musical. They energize and transform the unique experience of each poem and poet; they give a permanent glow to the beautiful local civilization that is this book.

—Vijay Seshadri

In George Kraus's poems we find ourselves in the realm of creation and destruction seemingly at once. It is on this fine line that Kraus so deftly balances.

Marcia Arrieta's work is all about serious play. A yearning for larger, more formalized bodies of knowledge is met by the drive to notice, to see fully on an intimate, human scale.

In Draglines, each of Pat Landreth Keller's poems function as a "dragline," working to pull meaning from the past. Her signature "story-made-myth" combines key elements of any good tale: desire and trespass.

. . . that line between one environment and another, is a place of richness for Michael Carman. Studies of generations allow for deeper explorations of this state where opposites . . . live in a kind of earthly harmony.

I invite you to enter, sidle up and join this superbly constructed, conversationally diverse gathering. It's a terrifically lively party, full of one-of-a-kind characters, expert formal moves, and memorable tales. I count myself lucky to have been invited.

—Lia Purpura,
from the Foreword