The seriousness of a debilitating illness-not only living with, but moving on despite the odds are the darker fare of these new poems by Dennis Rhodes. Poems of liberation, of one who has come out the other side alive. One could imagine Sexton, if she had survived her own life, writing poems like "The last OCD poem"

A knife in the sink

makes me stop and think:

What if I tried it again?

I wouldn't survive

or come out alive-

I think I'll just wield my pen.

-Jeff Walt, author of Leave Smoke