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Barrow Street 2010 Prize Winner

Mechanical Fireflies is the perfect collision of James Wright’s anti-pastorals with Wallace Stevens’s meditations on the real.
—Kathy Fagan

For those whose eyes remain open, whose hearts are not afraid to come closer, let them come and be pierced, let them come and read and turn the pages and be beholden to a poet who seems born to mes- merize, having learned from The Great Mesmerizer — the moon itself — that we are all one person, no matter who we are or when we lived.”
—Mary Ruefle

Often, the narrators of these poems look over their moonlit landscapes, finding in them opportunities for profound, unpredictable meditations on sex, childhood, history, poetry, and violence. Inhabited by the ghost of Walt Whitman and imbued with the pleasures of nuanced observation, this is a richly imagina- tive, energetic poetry collection, one I will return to with pleasure.
—Kevin Prufer

Doug Ramspeck is the author of four poetry collections. His first book, Black Tupelo Country, received the John Ciardi Prize. He teaches at The Ohio State University at Lima.