Alan Michael Parker's latest collection, The Age of Discovery, is a work of enduring beauty, filled with his signature tenderness and surprise. Parker's interests range from the Psalms to the Internet, from a woman stepping out her window to die to two men trying to learn how to live as they argue in a rowboat. With an eye on some of the greatest love poets (Amichai, Mistral, Neruda), Parker delivers a collection deep in empathy, rigorously attentive, and formally inventive.

In Parker's poems, the time of day matters, as we move through dawn, dusk, and deep night. There's often a knowing moon, an unknowable wisdom, and a relentless curiosity: he's a poet who delights in imaginative play, too, with an abiding love of song and imagery. But we're always smack in the 21^st century in this new collection, with technology redefining the sublime, and the ever-present threat of loneliness--tempered, these poems suggest, by compassion and humor.