Todd Robinson

"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 When the Next Big War Blows Down the Valley

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"These poems are simultaneously societal and intensely personal, gleaned through a lens of unifying solitariness [ . . . ] the collection’s sincerity, its refusal of sensationalism, takes deep root in an indifferent world. It is a testament to resilience, an appraisal, not of perceived failures and successes, promotions and a couple extra inches on our television screens, but of our tenacity to strive forth, to “work like a serf until the last dogs / die and you can sleep in the quiet hum of clean escapism” without losing the part of us that makes it all relevant." —David Z. Drees, editor of WSC Press (review)