David Clewell s spirited poems cut through the noise we too often accommodate in our daily lives. Breath by surprising breath, this poet takes us into chambers of the heart that have never been mapped quite this way before. By turns raucous and strangely soothing, narrative and lyrical, Clewell traffics in unlikely and compelling details of our mostly discernible world: a school custodian s role in the burgeoning Space Race, the vastness of abandoned missile silos, the first lawn flamingos, and the living fossil still using a typewriter.

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Help Is on the Way takes readers from the subways of New York City to the savannas of Paleolithic Africa to the transplant ward of Kyoto University Hospital. But whatever their setting, these poems are enlivened by the subtle music, penetrating wit, and remarkable emotional honesty that won high praise for his earlier collection, Sea of Faith, and constitute John Brehm's singularly engaging voice.