For over two decades I've been reading, with great pleasure, the utterly unique poems of Charles Harper Webb. Operating somewhere between the lyric and the narrative - that rich grasslands where absolute clarity and reverberant mystery can happily exist - Shadow Ball shows us why we love poetry: it tries to tell us the truth and because the truth is often painful it sometimes makes us laugh. I can't wait to stand on a chair, wave this book in my hand, and shout: 'Read this book, citizens, read this book!' - Thomas Lux ""'Unscrew the locks from the doors! / Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!'"" Walt Whitman declared, and Charles Webb has come bursting through with great vitality and energy, with his sly wit and his dark irony, his funny bone and his rage, his rock-and-roll sensibility and his American gift for gab, his skepticism and his faith, his cunning art. It is a joy to have this life's work gathered together."" - Edward Hirsch ""Hurray for Shadow Ball! Now the best of Charles Harper Webb's brilliant and funny poems are packed into one book. And the new ones are just as good. Here is a major poet of the twenty-first century who makes us laugh but also gulp uneasily at his spooky knowledge of human nature."" - Maura Stanton
