Jay Hopler's second collection, a mourning song for his father, is an
elegy of uproar, a careening hymn to disaster and its aftermath. In
lyric poems by turns droll and desolate, Hopler documents the struggle
to live in the face of great loss, a task that sends him ranging through
Florida's torrid subtropics, the mountains of the American West, the
streets of Rome, and the Umbrian countryside. Vivid, dynamic,
unrestrained: The Abridged History of Rainfall is a festival of glowing
saints and fighting cocks, of firebombs and birdsong.