Inexhaustible Before

Bob Pfeiffer's second poetry collection dares us to be ';good to one another,' to be ';serious about experience,' and ';to enjoy / the smallest fragments of life.' It's a book about fatherhood, citizenship, andfirst and foremostlove. At turns funny, at turns enraged by injustice, these clear-eyed and kindhearted poems achieve hopefulness without falling into naivety. Indeed, they recognize that ';There is the world we have, / and the world we want,' and that a huge gulf exists between the two. Poetry, though, offers us, we who reside in that first world, a way to access the second, its joys and miracles, and we're lucky to have Bob Pfeiffer to show us the way. James Davis May, author of Unquiet Things In The Inexhaustible Before, his powerfully moving second collection of poems, Bob Pfeiffer writes, ';This world is divided into two types of people: those with empathy for the livingand those without.' Unquestionably the poems of this book express empathy at every turn: for past girlfriends, polar bears, animals struck by cars, tsunami victims, a mother diagnosed with cancer, a girlfriend become wife, a baby daughterUnderpinning the voice of this emotionally rich book is a belief in our shared humanity and the ultimate hope for redemption through love. Beth Gylys, author of Sky Blue Enough to Drink