The Year We Let the House Fall Down

The Year We Let the House Fall Down is a book that bears limitation, loss, and miracle with "a juggler's grace." In these brief but revelatory poems, Mike James delights in the ephemeral glory of the anecdotal. Each one shimmers with a strange clarity but feels so familiar and fluid it almost slips out of your hands. It will surprise you the first time you read it, and again, when you come back to it. Jesse Breite, author of The Knife Collector Mike James's new collection, The Year We Let the House Fall Down, is his best yet. The seeming casualness of his diction sets the reader up for beautiful surprises in every poem. Each is a gem of gratitude or longing or celebration, with love at its center. His endings invariably leave me nodding in recognition. Susan Ludvigson, author of Sweet Confluence In these tight, sharp poems, the past is gone and the future is nowhere. Even the stars, beacons of eternity in childhood, are now just an immensity to be lost in. But this world is wonderful, in spite of all that, and the book is peppered with superb moments of Now, and of nostalgic memories, a debris field that the poet can only call beautiful. Leon Stokesbury, author of Autumn Rhythm