A vivid and unsentimental examination of brutality and the scars it
leaves, this collection by London s Dan Burt is a memoir in poetry and
prose of his harsh, formative, working-class world. Both elegiac and
philosophical, the poems highlight the poet s skill with traditional
forms and match the scale of his concerns with a substantial formal
architecture and an answerable narrative. Among other retrospections,
Burt recalls his father, a powerful, hard, and sympathetic figure with
the wisdom of a man of action, yet remains free from sentiment or
illusion in his sense of the natural and social worlds."