Description: "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."--Terese Svoboda, author of Professor Harriman's Steam Air-Ship
Brief description: Todd Robinson earned a B.A. and M.A. in English from Creighton University, and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He teaches in the Writer's Workshop and the Thompson Learning Community at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. His work has appeared in The Cortland Review, Canopic Jar, and A Dozen Nothing.
Review Quotes: "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