This comprehensive collection gathered from the late English professor’s six published volumes showcases the well-loved poet at his musical, reflective best.” - Notre Dame Magazine
“The poems of Ernest Sandeen among other things record not only a writing life but a life in writing: a history of the hours when reflection turns to discovery, and observation finds its fulfillment in the rhythms of a sentence, the weaving of consonants through a line, in pursuit of a mystery. Few poets have been blessed with the gift to sustain that process of meditation, composing, and questioning so consistently, and for so long, in works that are clear-eyed, passionate, and precise.” —Robert Pinsky, from the Foreword
Praise for Can These Bones Live?:
“The themes of [Sandeen’s] poems are often dark: lost youth, lost chances, lost friends. . . . But in the darkness, Sandeen’s joy still shines through, a joy at having lived long enough and well enough to find in each additional day a welcome new friend and in death at last an old friend long-expected.” —First Things
“I find Can These Bones Live? a compelling, moving book. The poems . . . are written from necessity and out of a lifetime’s experience. In more than one sense they are a lesson and an inspiration.” —Jeremy Hooker
“. . . it’s rare to find a book of poetry that so powerfully combines wisdom and pleasure.” —John Frederick Nims
Praise for A Later Day, Another Year:
“I love the unforced wildness, the fusion of unsentimental sweetness of being human—and mortal—rendered in pristine, musical style. What to Ernest Sandeen must be an essential act of making and understanding has become for the rest of us a great gift.” —Michael Ryan
“A Later Day, Another Year is a book wonderfully ‘vulnerable to new knowledge,’ by as fine a poet as America has had to offer, one who distinguishes himself from almost every other I can think of by the beauty of his faithful capacity for making the fine essential discriminations betweeen dreams in and of the world.” —John Engels