The Happiness of this World

It is this "shockability" that informs Karl Kirchwey's new work. Through four collections, he has explored the resonances between past and present, seeking a sense of home in a world of losses. Now, as the horrors of the modern world crowd in on him, he meditates on the future his children will inherit. These are angry poems, tender poems, poems of hope, love, and despair. Reviewing Kirchwey's last book in The New Criterion , William Logan wrote: "An elegy for an uncle, a World War II pilot kill