Cracked Altimeter

Bring your parachute and your appreciation for wonder because Joe Milford pilots us on a breathtakingly perilous journey where "[e]very world is a womb." So why is the altimeter cracked? Maybe because we have been asked to fly through unchartered altitudes with these "protracted/aerial maneuvers," and ultimately we have been asked to climb and climb until we get to the bottom. He ushers us into the hushed worlds and the howling worlds-the scorched places where we love and cry and dream and laugh and ache and love. Joe Milford is a mad minstrel-pilot whose songs are compassionate and crazy-gracious and aerobatic-always lucidly enigmatic. Be prepared to fly through "a rain of flaming dictionaries." Soar through this book. It is crackingly beautiful. -Patrick Lawler, author of Feeding the Fear of the Earth Joe Milford's Cracked Altimeter is fantastic. Each line is packed with such intense vividness and rhythm. It's overwhelming. Milford's labyrinthine constructions of language tear your head off and make you taste the colors of the imagery, leaving you begging for more. One of the best books of contemporary poetry I've read in a long time. -Connor Stratman, author of Invisible Entrances and First Testament