Writhe. Waltz

John McDermott's Writhe.Waltz is a book I would impulsively hand to anyone who says, "I don't understand poetry," or "poems are too complicated for me," because in these poems are the complications of being a person, a father, a husband, a son, given to us in our language and filled with our popular culture. Page after page, McDermott's craftsmanship makes clear what Sir Philip Sidney meant 500 years ago when he wrote, "verse is but an ornament to prose." These poems answer W.B. Yeats' question, "how can we know the dancer from the dance?" Writhe.Waltz makes beautiful the squirm, the writhe inherent in trying to figure this life on the dancefloor that is the page, and no matter how awkward it might feel, these poems "party like it's 1999."

Christian Anton Gerardauthor of Holdfast and Wilmot Here, Collect for Stella

I've just stepped through the exit of the popular culture curiosity shop that is John McDermott's Writhe.Waltz, but I just can't seem to close the door behind me. I keep ducking back inside to admire again how the poems there--whether about actors, grunge musicians, knick-knacks, killers and keepsakes, board games, or poets long dead--can begin in novelty and off-kilter perspective but always end up showing us something true about ourselves. It's all there: what we want. Why we hurt. How we try to medicate. These poems are smart, imaginative, sometimes idiosyncratic. I feel very lucky to have encountered them.

Justin Hamm, author of The Inheritance, American Ephemeral, and Lessons in Ruin