Candid, directly affecting in his unadorned diction, he returns time and again to a broken marriage, a five-year-old nephew’s drowning, a miscarriage, an admired yet somehow unattainable father, immutable loneliness, as well as an ambivalent sense of being at once self-immobilized and inherently rootless... Such self-absorption would make for gloomy reading, were it not for the poet's storytelling gifts, which include a talent for creating suspense and understating the essential... The Blessing is a carefully structured narrative, an overarching tale of a man evolving from 'despair, loss, and dread' to a more complex state of mind. The haunting presences from the past may never relinquish their grip on him, but a long-awaited 'blessing'—love—now also vies for his future."—Poetry