Charles Rafferty works in masks, voices, and personae. Winner of the fifth annual Arkansas Poetry Award, The Man on the Tower consists of dramatic monologues and fables about “the man” the many incarnations of our lives that are not allowed, cannot be lived, or are kept darkly hidden. Made believable in the lines of Rafferty’s poems, his characters show us their desires, complaints, and obsessions, often revealing what they would want to keep concealed, the shameful and the wild.