Everybody Looks Down

Everybody Looks Down, by Robert Benefiel, is a book written with the intent to capture a feeling of being both lost and found, most of the poems in this volume reflect on human interaction. Whether it be in public, with a new lover, or within ones self, throughout the book most of the poems are trying to tell the story of how people both seem to be honest and yet completely reserved simultaneously. Considered to be a part of a trilogy of poetry books that were written during a huge change in the authors life, this book tends to define the middle of that change, fluctuating from positive sentiments of ones own character and world, to the utter abandon of ones own self and their previous way of viewing the world. Neither made up of the past, or the future, this book is made up of looking at a present influenced by both what is and what may never be.