Poetry. Describing his new book as an intimate primer to a history of literary epochs, Dan Beachy-Quick summons his belief that tradition and experiment are mutually embracing, and his curiosity about humble forms of song and rhyme as figures of enchantment that induce the most primal modes of perception. GENTLESSNESS is the work of a poetic archaeologist who finds relict layers of meaning still alive in traditional measures and forms.

By means both gentle and less than gentle, these poems make space for us to consider our ideas of ourselves, of the divine, of our cultural and literary inheritances, and the language we use to create and hold them… Uncannily beautiful.–Mary Szybist

These are lines to be read in all the stillness you can find.–Jean Valentine