Sunflower Brother

Poetry. "Sam Witt's poems are a rhapsody and 'crisp singing' both. The best are purest poetry--mixing beauty, the reaches of language, and an imagination equally made up of body and of grace. He speaks in all our tones. His equivalences are fresh and reveal an involved, likable world"--Carol Frost.

"Sunflower Brother pairs a pastoral setting with images of fire, explosion, irradiation, and burning; both sets of images are equal parts creation and destruction. Witt's voice always feels fresh from, and flushed with loss and his elegies -- poems written for the dead -- not only acknowledge death and limitation but try to reinvest the mourning self with life. The result can be both beautiful and direct, whether the poet addresses a deceased relative, or speaks more generally to what he perceives as our decaying world. Often it sounds more like Witt's been reading Keats than anything from his own century." --Katie Peterson, New Orleans Review

"Sam Witt confesses, 'The truth is, // I love the world. / Sometimes part of me even loves / what we've done to it.' Witt loves our world hard, and what he does for it is to fashion a language, sad and bitter but tough and full of sunflowers, that shows us a way to love it, too. This is poetry for strong readers." --Robert E. McDonough

"Sam Witt's poems are rhapsody and 'crisp singing' both. The best are purest poetry -- mixing beauty, the reaches of language, and an imagination equally made up of body and grace. He speaks in all our tones. His equivalences are fresh and reveal an involved, likable world." --Carol Frost