"Terry Persun's poems about parting--about all the losses, signified by one parting--"swim down/towards the back/of his heart/looking for light," and find it in the swimming itself--in the work the poems do. There is good humor here, at the edge of despair with love and work, and good writing. These poems are clean and sudden as pain, a pain that sometimes drives them into new rooms where they can surprise and energize us with their struggle and with their willingness to see clearly: "Each awakening/from darkness comes first/with sudden awe, then/fright, the recollection."
--Felda Brown Jackson, author of "Fishing With Blood," "Do Not Peel the Birches," and "The Devil's Child,"