Disquiet

"The sixty-seven lyric poems that comprise John Witte's Disquiet shed their beautiful lamplight on so many separate elements, beings and conditions, one can feel the loom of Neruda's Elemental Odes, and hear in them, exquisitely, the voices and footfalls of one's own life and the darkly marvelous lives of the imagination. This is an utterly distinctive volume, courageous, disquieting indeed, in its technical and emotional clarity, and in the amazing range of reference that includes us all. If you love poetry, you will love this book."—Christopher Howell, author of Dreamless and Possible

"In John Witte's poems, the elements—air, water, earth, fire—are all in flux, all caught in the fierce beauty of their disquietude. Each poem exhorts us to see how much 'in love we arehow brief / how fitfullyburning.' Praise to this tongue stammering, scrambling, plunging to say its hellos, its goodbyes. What a wonderful, wondrous book Disquiet is."—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita and author of Understory, reviewing a previous edition or volume