The Fifth Voice

What a good idea: four different voices bound in one volume. -Thomas Lux These writers have jimmied their way into "meaning through a back door" by crafting a sleight-of-hand nonchalance. As if playing chicken with the mundane, they have nosed into the diaries of strangers and loved ones and found themselves at a two-way mirror, a crossroads of "shift and seep." A combination of third- person nerve and first-person wit, the collection invites us to contemplate "treading water under the waves." --Ed Pavlic A festival of different lyric voices between the same covers. Here, in Toadlily Press's second collection, you will find four chapbooks that are both revealing and perceptive. -Ilya Kaminsky This fine volume reminds us why Toadlily Press is a necessary presence in contemporary poetry. Four distinctive, memorable poets: Givotovsky, Hart, Kucij and Strous. The Fifth Voice might be described by Strous's farm couple resting at twilight, "all the work, all the intelligence of the work/ changed to this dark light gleaming." -Suzanne Cleary