Poetry. "This graceful book by a Lamont winner is a powerful testimony to hope. A conscientious objector who worked with war-injured children in Vietnam, Balaban writes now for his own child: 'This is what Daddy was doing / the August you were born. / Wandering off alone on highways / walking off highways into the night / calming a loud head with the past / listening to things that make a song.' A 'hunger for words pure as clear water' inspires Balaban to make his own music—accessible poems in common speech—and also to find solace in nature and the ways words and nature can work together to heal: 'I bring you the water's benediction / love like water makes the canyons bloom.'"—Kathleen Norris, Library Journal

John Balaban is the author of a dozen books of poetry, prose, and Vietnamese translations whose accolades include two National Book Award nominations, the Lamont Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award. His translation Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong was featured on NPR's Fresh Air. Balaban teaches at North Carolina State University and lives in Raleigh.