Ceiling of Sticks

“This collection brings a highly developed sense of global politics up for inspection. . . . The elucidation of ‘the political’ is most often centered on the body, thus the poems are both emotionally revealing and gripping.”—Eloise Klein Healy, author of The Islands Project
“These eloquent poems address head-on issues of place and displacement, but not in the usual way. The place in these poems is both inward and outward, a powerful topography of feeling and loss, often remedied by love and always rendered by language and craft. This is a wonderful debut collection.”—Eavan Boland, author of New Collected Poems and Domestic Violence
“Shane Book’s refined epistles unbraid and unfold into natural revelations that are earthbound, spiritual, and unconditional. There’s an unsentimental celebration in Ceiling of Sticks that lets us see the smallest feelings beneath a big sky, without any apology, and we can count ourselves as lucky.”—Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Warhorses and Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977–1989
"Brilliant, scathing, and solid poetry."—Bob Holman and Margery Snyder, poetry.about.com
"Ceiling of Sticks is an impressive, far-reaching first collection from an artist with many stories to share. Book crosses boundaries with both urgency and ease, transporting his reader from the arena of the personal to more remote worlds of significance. This is the real achievement and the most interesting aspect of these poems: how Book takes disparate landscapes and brings them under one roof."—Ben Purkert, Harvard Review Online
"The success of this collection lies within Book's dual vision, an eye for that which wounds and that which remains beautifully unchanged."—Susannah Nevison, Jerry Magazine