Two Midwest Voices: Mirror Lake by Jerry Roscoe and The Weather in Athens by Robert DeMott

Poetry. "Jerry Roscoe is a poet of the American commonplace. I wanted to say - full of 'generic pleasures' (his words) about those old neighborhoods, the last haircut from Louie and the women who traveled too quickly by - but his framework is a setup, a carefully crafted fuse that burns toward unsettling surprises. MIRROR LAKE launched me into a place that I almost forgot to remember and be thankful for. Read and enjoy; you'll know yourself better for it" - George Myers Jr. "Bob DeMott's poems achieve what is to me one of the most important accomplishments any poet can offer. Their style, which is straightforward and conversational -- with figurative language gracefully and humbly eased in - is almost always transparent: We are invited to read through the screen of the words into the poem without being dragged back to the surface of the page by stylistic and graphic peculiarities. This is a reader's poetry, inviting, heartfelt, generous and moving" - Ted Kooser.