“[Weigl’s] subjects reveal a great deal of wisdom about life. Weigl is a meditative poet without being sententious; he writes about nature and death without melodrama or pity.” –Ken Tucker, The Baltimore Sun
“This collection is suffused with the search for beauty, along with the lurking question of whether or not beauty can provide a counterbalance to pain.” –Leonard Kress, The Ohioana Quarterly
“Like all great poets, Bruce Weigl tries to make sense of the idiotic mix of beauty and pain in the world. In The Unraveling Strangeness, he weighs the difference between what people can bear and what they must. ‘We hide so many fears inside, so many lives,’ he says, and while his perfectly turned mid-American lines reveal the disappointments and regrets of the lost and unloved, he somehow holds on to a childlike wonder–also American–yearning after a misplaced innocence and withheld forgiveness we all deserve.” –Stewart O’Nan, author of Wish You Were Here
“Because Bruce Weigl’s poems are so plainspoken and so incorrigibly beautiful, they’re dangerou
s. The Unraveling Strangeness is a book to read and reread, all the way to hell and back. You’ll be a better American for it when you get home.” –Russell Banks, author of The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction
“Bruce Weigl is unafraid to give us the ugliest information, but the poem is beautiful. Perhaps he is afraid, but knows it has to be done for beauty’s sake.” –Grace Paley, author of Begin Again: Collect Poems
Grove Press
