The Drowning Room evidences a life richly lived and keenly observed, and that life is portrayed with wit, nuance, and a gritty parking-lot elegance. - DAVID KIRBY Judge for the 2013 New American Poetry Prize and author of The Biscuit Joint In these poems, Damien Shuck manages the considerable feat of approaching life from an oblique and acute angle at the same time. The poems probe and ponder yet consistently sink their metaphorical teeth into numerous byways of misapprehension. Things don't go right in this particular universe, where malfeasance is often America's middle name, but there is a delight in imagination, in poetry, in the keeping on that human beings are so abysmally good at. Like a shadow, these poems will stay with you-full of wit, bemused observation, and, amid humanity's pratfalls, real feeling for the tragic sense of life. - BARON WORMSER Author of The Road Washes Out in Spring The Drowning Room wrestles with the ever-present angel of absurdity. The moves Shuck makes-psychological, emotional, rhetorical-are tragi-comic postures that we recognize as our own. Again and again we are stunned to find ourselves laughing, even as we wince at the accuracy of his insights. Whether such brave foolishness leads to wisdom is up to us; Shuck has pointed us in the right direction. - RICHARD HOFFMAN Author of Love and Fury: A Memoir