Counting the Black Angels

         "Len Roberts is a poet of unwavering truthfulness and unwavering
        mercy," commented Sharon Olds about Black Wings, a 1988 National
        Poetry Series selection. Counting the Black Angels, Roberts's eighth
        book of poetry, is a piercingly painful and redemptive work in which he
        probes memories of a violent family history and his covenants with God
        and the "Black Angels."
      "Roberts's new work is among the most intelligent, moving, and expressive
        poetry now being written."
        -- Hayden Carruth