ED PAVLIC's other books are Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue, which won the American Poetry Review / Honickman First Book Award in 2001, and his study of African American modernism, Crossroads Modernism (University of Minnesota Press, 2002). His forthcoming books are Winners Have Yet to be Announced: A Song for Donny Hathaway, an epic poem centered on the life and music of the soul singer (University of Georgia Press, 2008), and a prose-poetic photo essay set on a dhow off the coast of Kenya, but here are small clear refractions.
 

“The tension in Ed Pavlic’s poems is a language-cable wrought to swing you out over unnerving spaces, let you see and hear what they really hold, and bring you back up more alive than you were before. Dialogic, dangerous, this is a poetics of body and soul, music to listen to with all five senses.”—Adrienne Rich

“Labors Lost Left Unfinished perfects Ed Pavlic’s sharp eye for popular culture and history. This collection is like an alluvial fan that draws everything to a lyrical moment, to a reckoning. There’s a beauty embodied in this poet’s straightforward journey.”—Yusef Komunyakaa