"Konstantin Kulakov is a genuine poet - with a subtle intelligence and lyrical power. Excavating The Sky is an artistic gem " Cornel West "Kulakov's is a voice to be reckoned with... These are brave, bold poems, excruciatingly beautiful..." The Christian Century In his debut collection of poems, Excavating the Sky, Konstantin Kulakov labors to relate the inner spirituality of his Russian background to the fragmentation of a market-driven New World. Whether it is his Muslim-Christian relationship, his dance with natural science, or his struggle to expose continued US raciality, Kulakov seeks the contradictions in everything, "mixing words to bring-out sparks." What emerges is a spiritual language that resists the exclusionary tendencies of the 21st century and offers subtle flashes of possibility.