In each of the twenty-two poems in Sinners in the Hands, Ann Killough inhabits and explores an iconic work of American literature, from Walden and 'The Gettysburg Address' to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Gone with the Wind... her poems vibrate between the world of the text and the world of the flesh, at once both abstract and concrete. ... Read moreThey are insightful and deft, they play with our notion of scale and expand us, all in language that is both clear and mysterious. Killough leaves us with an understanding of our passions, our national character, and ourselves. - Beth Ann Fennelly, Series Judge; ""The voice of these poems is intimate, probing, perplexed, witty, and delightfully intelligent. If not unequivocally admirable, Killough's literary forebears are, however, always her comrades, and through them she gains some purchase on the bloody contradictions in American life, especially when it comes to matters of race. At the heart of her poems... is Killough's richly textured lament urging us not to forget the tragic complexity of all we have inherited. The wondrous affirmation of this book is that in probing our contradictions Killough also reminds us of the richness of human possibility in the unfinished American democratic experiment."" - Fred Marchant Show Less