Wry, furious, desperate, zonked, puffed with 'tude, the heroes of the Bible tell the hidden side of their tales to a spellbound modern audience. In verse at once exquisite and wrenching, these poems explore the apocalyptic horror, gritty humanness, and dubious grace which flares when Christian sacred write swaps fluids with pop culture.

"Simmerman's poems... don't bother with politeness or pretense. ... [He] displays a Robert Lowell-like edge, yet with a breezy, conversational style and snide sense of humor."  --Susan Shapiro for St. Petersburg Times

"Jim Simmerman's new book. . .offers troubling and resonant satisfactions both in its poetic mastery and its heartfelt inquiries. . . .If forced to compare him to another contemporary poet, I'd have to posit a composite: Bill Knott (for playful inventiveness) plus Marilyn Hacker (for formal competence) plus Philip Levine (for his good heart). If that seems like an unlikely aesthetic mix to dwell in one poet, such are the surprises in these poems."  --Alison Deming for the Sonora Review

"There is a powerful conversational ease and intimacy to Jim Simmerman's new poems, a deceptive nonchalance that masks their deep ironies and hard-won truths."  --David St. John

"Simmerman sounds like a young American Philip Larkin in some of these poems."  --Christopher Davis for Denver Quarterly

Jim Simmerman's four books of poetry include, most recently Moon Go Away, I Don't Love You No More and Kingdom Come, both published by Miami University Press. Simmerman co-edited Dog Music: Poetry about Dogs.

His poems have appeared in such places as Antaeus, Poetry, Pushcart Prize X, and he has received fellowships from the NEA, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers. A former Secretary and Board member of Associated Writing Programs, he lives in the high country of northern Arizona.