The Fields

To open on this slender collection of Akerman's poems, maybe even read them aloud, is to thank your stars that someone, somewhere is conserving inner space. Like his most worthwhile antecedents, Akerman walks compromised American landscapes that then become the new borderland between the limitless capacities of consciousness and the bounded human project. What he brings is a voice that is attent, rueful, funny, liturgical, and - do I dare say it? - owns a longing to be in contact that, here and now, feels both necessary and just.

-Mark Nickels, author of Cicada