Readiness

Behind surfaces that can sometimes be wryly comic, Mark Cox is unafraid to risk adult tenderness ("brutal tenderness" he says in one poem) and great empathy for this world's sufferers. Which is to say that beneath a rich variety of occasions (from an ancient Egyptian mummifier doing up a fifteen-foot crocodile, to a current-day housewife doing up an angel food cake), Cox's bedrock concern is that impossible thing of endless grief and joy that we call the human condition. These poetic meditations and monologues are some of the least prosaic prose you'll ever read. —Albert Goldbarth