This Isabella Gardner Poetry Award-winning book-length poem is a medley of voices in dialogue with each other—overheard, remembered, and internal—that represents a mind at work as it considers the destructiveness of human nature, the hypocrisy and artifice of the American dream. Voices from personal conversations, political speeches, Guantanamo detainees, news reports, and famous poets fill these pages, ultimately capturing a world of disrupted beauty and unrealized potential.

Christian Barter is the author of two previous poetry collections: In Someone Else’s House and The Singers I Prefer. Living in Bar Harbor, ME, he is the centennial Poet Laureate of Acadia National Park.