Poetry. Winner of the 2010 New Issues Poetry Prize, Selected by Linda Gregerson. "The way memory and grief and love compose the stories that enable us to go on living. The toxic mix of innocence and inadvertence, wishfulness and making-do that comes to look like purpose. Which on the scale of nations we call 'policy.' These brilliant poems have leverage on it all: micro- and macro- and the sorry, human mess we too often make of both. They also have so masterful a way with idiom and timing that even the sternest insight is leavened with a measure of joy. Tonic intelligence, exhilarating craftsmanship: Jeff Hoffman's fine first book is a gift to us all"—Linda Gregerson, from the Judge's Citation.