"Tomas Morin's poems are as infectious and spooky and darkly humorous as the Brothers Grimm, as shapely and colloquial and eloquent as John Donne, and as skeptical and addicted to history-as-fable as Zbigniew Herbert."--Tom Sleigh, from the introduction

"An energetic and moving book of fantasias and elegies."--Edward Hirsch

Selected from over one thousand manuscripts for the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, Tomas Q. Morin's debut is rich with the mastery of Morin's lush storytelling. From war-torn images of Eastern Europe in the mid-1900s to modern-day glimpses of the American southwest, these poems are bold and brightly imagined.

From "Castrato":

"What do you call a gifted soprano
with no balls who is too ugly
to play the heroine, is never tall enough
for the role of the hero? Wait a quarter century
and you can fast forward past the floggings,
the endless sermons, the giggles under alders
with curious girls, busted noses, carped
sisters with chubby boys, the innumerable
nights of sleeplessness. Better to skip all this
unpleasantness and descend the last rise
toward the coast where you can stroll the docks
in the short light of winter, get lost
in the cloudbank, let the sea ripen
in your hair, scan the flat water
for the handsome young men . . ."

Tomas Q. Morin was born in Texas and educated at Texas State University and Johns Hopkins University. He lives in San Marcos, Texas, and teaches at Texas State University.

"The most important poet of the twentieth century--in any language."--Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"'The Heights of Macchu Picchu' is a poem of ascension. . . . In its final passages, Neruda's poetry jumps from a personal hope to a global one; from a poetry dealing with the poet's heart to a poetry centered on humanity's struggles."--BBC

"The Heights of Machu Picchu" has been called Pablo Neruda's greatest contribution to poetry--a search for the "indestructible, imperishable life" in all things. Inspired by his journey to the ancient ruins, Neruda calls the lost Incan civilization to "rise up and be born," and also empowers the people of his time. This new translation by poet Tomas Q. Morin includes an introduction by Morin and Neruda's Spanish original.

"I stare at the clothes and hands,
the carvings of water in a sonorous hollow,
the wall rubbed smooth by the touch of a face
that with my eyes gazed at the earthly lights,
that with my hands oiled the vanished
planks: because everything, clothes, skin, dishes,
words, wine, breads,
went away, fell to the earth."

Pablo Neruda (1904-73), one of the world's most beloved poets, was also a diplomat and member of the Chilean Senate. In 1970 he was appointed as Chile's ambassador to France; in 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Tomas Q. Morin is a poet and translator and teaches at Texas State University.

Growing up in a small town in South Texas in the eighties and nineties, poverty, machismo, and drug addiction were everywhere for Tomas Q. Morin. He was around four or five years old when he first remembers his father cooking heroin, and he recalls many times he and his mother accompanied his father while he was on the hunt for more, Morin in the back seat keeping an eye out for unmarked cop cars, just as his father taught him. It was on one of these drives that, for the first time, he blinked in a way that evolution hadn't intended. Let Me Count the Ways is the memoir of a journey into obsessive-compulsive disorder, a mechanism to survive a childhood filled with pain, violence, and unpredictability. Morin's compulsions were a way to hold onto his love for his family in uncertain times until OCD became a prison he struggled for decades to escape. Tender, unflinching, and even funny, this vivid portrait of South Texas life challenges our ideas about fatherhood, drug abuse, and mental illness.