Several motifs run through the formal and free-verse poems in Jonathan Fink's debut collection: the relationship of the physical body to labor and desire, the nature of suffering that is paradoxically overpowering and instructive, and the struggle and definition of the individual will within the larger social world.

Jonathan Fink is the director of creative writing at the University of West Florida. He has received the Editors' Prize in Poetry from the Missouri Review, the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Nonfiction/Essay from Southwest Review, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Emory University, among other institutions.