Poetry. This first full-length collection of work marks the emergence of a strong new voice in American poetry. WATCHING CARTOONS BEFORE ATTENDING A FUNERAL enacts an intimate and familiar accord between personal and communal perception--`the etiquette failure teaches, the quiet an owl inspires'--the sweet sting of living. He `lowers a lens' and we see what has been there all along, so self-evident yet willfully avoided. The poet endows our thousand and one indiscretions with a human face and the words to admit them. WATCHING CARTOONS is a risk and a beckoning"--CD Wright.