Mass for Shut-Ins (Paperback)

"Todd Robinson has written such tender love poems in MASS FOR SHUT-INS that you might read them to your significant other and hope for success—a veritable Neruda of Nebraska. In 'Skin,' the speaker is 'a soft / ravening / hominid torched / by rosewater/ & coconut oil.' The poems are no less fervent toward the old sod, beautifully evoking the contemporary Midwest. He feels 'the jolt of coal trains / through the gut of steaming America.' A splendid debut."—Therese Svoboda

"The poems in Todd Robinson’s Mass for Shut-Ins are simultaneously societal and intensely personal, gleaned through a lens of unifying solitariness, the sense that "We, anonymous cannon-fodder" share more than we've ever differed, our burden of impermanence both unique and unexceptional."—David Z. Drees, WSC Press