Poetry. "The task David Sloan takes on in this collection is nothing less than to depict the struggle to live an authentic life as a necessarily flawed human being. While envying and celebrating 'the casual exactitude of lines/ measured out like music' by carpenters working in his attic, or his own teenage son's unselfconsciousness, Sloan does not shy away from exposing what he calls 'all my ineptitudes' as a son, brother, father, and husband. But this uneasy awareness of the dread mingled with elation only deepens his appreciation of those human ties and of the world around him, whose beauty remains (as in the title of one of my favorite poems) 'unfixable.'" Jeffrey Harrison"