Poetry. Edited by Trace Peterson, Gregory Laynor and Eli Goldblatt. More than any other individual, Gil Ott was the person most responsible for the strength of the poetry community in Philadelphia during his lifetime. A small 'd' democrat, Gil led by example, usually denying that he was doing anything other than just being himself. His own verse blends multiple traditions with a directness that is unmistakably his mark. These poems are just like their author: funny, gentle, brilliant, and sometimes more intense than you can handle.--Ron Silliman

Gil Ott has always been this gigantic presence in poetry to me. For a while I thought maybe it was because he was one of the first real poets I met as a teenager. But it is actually because he is a real poet, an absolute poet, always kept in the present tense no matter how far away his body we knew has become. To garner and sustain the favor of the Muse is a skill apparent in this extraordinary book. If you believe in the strength of poetry, in poems as heat-seeking missiles capable of intercepting a bleak disregard for life then here is a gigantic poetry to smother the worst --CA Conrad