Third-Class Relics

The pleasures provided by Scott Dalgarno's Third-Class Relics are abundant. In evidence are a discerning mind, a musical ear, a witty intellect, and a bruised but open heart.

With precise diction, compelling narratives, and smooth, inviting language, Dalgarno examines a wide array of subjects. Here is a poet at ease with unease. In one poem, he

defines limbo as a place where "Kettle never boils; dog circles / and circles but never lies down." In another, he addresses an "unrealized" zygote this way: "Your not being here / is

everywhere." For me, a good poem both entertains and disturbs, the latter by shaking us from complacency. Scott Dalgarno's book is filled with such poems. Third-Class Relics is a

first-class triumph.

-Andrea Hollander, author of And Now, Nowhere But Here

"There go the swallows / taking it out on the morning," writes Dalgarno, whose collection is a stirring portrayal of a life pulled in to focus. The poems in Third-Class Relics ask us to

reckon with the lyric tension of our lives in the metaphoric borderland of so many kinds of rapture. It arrives with a fresh and clear voice that invites its reader to remember they

are always already a viewer, a visitor, and a voyeur, too.

-Meg Day, author of Last Psalm at Sea Level