The Things I Notice Now

?This is a book of amazing range. Dennis Maloney is equally at home with ancient Japanese forms and the memory of hearing Janis Joplin at the Fillmore. Moving with confidence among continents and centuries, the poems have an uncanny immediacy that makes us feel as if the voice is always right here, right now. As one of our most accomplished translators, Maloney seems to have mastered the art of being invisible, so that his poems sing their human songs untethered from any particular autobiography, though they dip in and out of many. In this sense the book has multiple voices, all of which speak with the gravitas of age and experiencewhile somehow preserving an arresting freshness of vision. Easy of access, playful, profound, surprising, and often quietly heartbreaking, The Things I Notice Now is the work of a poet writing at the height of his powers.? ?Chase Twichell